In Telangana Rashtra Samithi government headed by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, anybody can say anything and get away with it, without bothering how it will hurt people.
Take the case of Telangana minister G Jagadeesh Reddy, a close confidant of KCR. For the second successive term, he became a minister in the KCR cabinet and was given the plum portfolio of higher education.
On Tuesday, when he was sworn in as a minister, Reddy was cloud nine and he didn’t even know what he was saying.
When some media persons approached him for his comment on the composition of the cabinet, he said it was a good and balanced cabinet with due representation to all sections based on merit.
The scribes asked him how the cabinet could be called a balanced one as there was no representation to women in the cabinet.
The minister commented: “Mahilalu intlo unnaru kada (Women are at home, no)?”
This has obviously shocked the scribes, one of them being a woman journalist.
She said: “Sir, what do you mean by that?” Reddy said: “Yeah, women are backing us,” and left the place without further comments.
Fortunately for him, his comments were not recorded on camera, but the reporters immediately posted them in social media and within hours, they went viral with thousands of people trolling the minister.
Telangana Mahila Congress president Nerella Sarada demanded that the minister withdraw his comments and tender an unconditional apology to women.
“It is surprising that the chief minister did not consider even a single woman MLA as fit to become a minister. It is an insult to all the women. The three women MLAs in TRS should resign from the party,” she said.