'Reddy', steady, go: Revanth Reddy to be the next Telangana Chief Minister

Revanth Reddy is all set to be the new Chief Minister of Telangana, sources told ANI on Tuesday. He is likely to take oath on December 7, a few ministers will also be taking oath along with him. A unanimous decision was taken in the CLP meet in Hyderabad and the final decision to appoint the CM was left to the party high command.

Due to a lack of consensus among the 64 victorious MLAs of the Congress party in the southern state for choosing the Chief Minister, the swearing-in ceremony was delayed on Monday.

Arrangements were made at Raj Bhavan on December 4 for A Revanth Reddy, the chief of the Congress state unit, and several other ministers, including a deputy chief minister, to take the oath of office as chief minister.


However, the party decided to postpone the ceremony after disagreements among senior leaders surfaced. The state party chief to take up the role of the CM was opposed by Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Uttam Kumar Reddy, Sridhar Babu, and the Komatireddy brothers, a leader with knowledge of the situation told TOI.

Who is Revanth Reddy?

Reddy, who started out with the ABVP in student politics, began his career as an MLA with the TDP under Chandrababu Naidu and then shifted to the Congress. He is a sitting Congress MP for Malkajgiri constituency and has been an MLA thrice, twice from the TDP and once from the Congress.

Reddy began his career by first being associated with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi. In 2006, he was elected as ZPTC member from Midjil mandal but his political career got wings when the TDP’s Naidu gave him a party ticket to contest from the Kodangal assembly seat in 2007 which he won three times in a row.

Reddy was removed from the TDP in 2017 as he was planning to join the Congress which he did. In 2018, he became one of the three working presidents of the state Congress. In the 2018 assembly elections, Reddy had campaigned for the Congress in different constituencies but was unable to retain his Kondangal seat. Nevertheless, the party fielded him in the Lok Sabha elections the following year in 2019 and he won from Malkajgiri.

In 2021, then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had appointed Revanth Reddy as the new president of Telangana Congress Committee to revive and lead the party to victory in 2023 assembly polls.

Revanth, who had joined the Congress just four years ago, got the post bypassing all the senior leaders, loyalists and veterans in the party with the AICC leadership being told that he has the charisma and commitment to revive the party in Telangana and bring it to power in 2023. He was seen as a firebrand leader with the tone, tenor and language to take on BRS head Chief Minister KCR as well as the BJP's then state president, an aggressive Bandi Sanjay Kumar.

Though senior leaders had opposed Reddy's candidature stating he comes from RSS background and was a leader of ABVP in his student days, what worked in his favour is that a majority of party office-bearers including TPCC vice-presidents, general secretaries, district presidents, former ministers, MPs and MLAs spoke in favour of Revanth in the consultation exercise done by AICC incharge of Telangana, Manickam Tagore.

However, some of the senior leaders alleged that this consultation process was stage managed by Revanth. Veteran Congressman and former MP V Hanumanth Rao had openly expressed opposition to Revanth Reddy saying that the former TDP MLA should not be allowed to lead the party and it would be disastrous to the organisation itself.

Reddy was given a tough test to prove his leadership: he was chosen as the Congress candidate to fight against chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao from the Kamareddy constituency, which was the second seat for the BRS boss apart from his traditional constituency of Gajwel.

By defeating KCR, he has proved his leadership and now cemented his position as the next Chief Minister of Telangana.