Normally, the publicity wing of the chief minister’s office, comprising chief public relations officer (CPRO) and a batch of PROs, sends press releases and photographs to the media on the official meetings of the chief minister and his statements.
But on Tuesday, media houses were surprised when they received photographs and official press releases from the Telangana CMO on the tour of state IT, industries minister and urban development minister K T Rama Rao to Warangal along with a couple of other ministers and MLAs to visit the flood-affected areas of Warangal town.
In fact, KTR has his own PR team which could have released the official press notes of his Warangal tour, as it used to do in the past when he visited Siricilla and other districts on his departmental works or constituency tours.
But this time, the CMO has released the press notes and pictures of KTR, which triggered speculations on whether his father – chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is slowly delegating the powers of the CM to his son.
In fact, as the chief minister of the state KCR should have visited the flood hit areas or at least made an aerial survey. But he preferred to stay indoors in Pragati Bhavan and sent his son to visit the affected areas to oversee relief and rehabilitation measures.
This led to the talk that KTR is likely to take over the mantle of the chief minister sooner or later. As a matter of fact, the officials in the districts have been extending all protocol formalities to KTR on the lines of the chief minister, though he still continues to be an ordinary minister.
Last week, KTR held an impromptu cabinet meeting for eight hours to discuss food processing and logistics policies at Pragati Bhavan, the camp office of the chief minister, when KCR was away at his farmhouse. The meeting was attended by all his cabinet colleagues and top officials including chief secretary Somesh Kumar.
While the TRS ranks are defending KTR holding the meeting on the ground that it was not a cabinet meeting but only an informal meeting of his colleagues to discuss a policy issue pertaining to his department, one wonders whether KCR will allow health minister Etala Rajender to hold a similar informal cabinet meeting to discuss the Covid-19 situation.
