It is widely believed in TRS circles that the sword is hanging on labour minister Ch Malla Reddy and whenever TRS chief and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao takes up reshuffle of his cabinet, Malla Reddy will be the first one to be dropped from the cabinet.

This is because Malla Reddy embarrassed KCR and TRS several times during the past two years since he became a minister in 2019 by involving in land grabbing cases and getting caught on audio demanding money from party leaders to give party tickets for municipal polls and demanding money from realtors to do real estate business in his Medchal constituency.

However, some unexpected development like Dubbak bypoll, Nagarjunasagar bypoll, graduate MLC polls, municipal polls etc have delayed cabinet reshuffling thereby saving Malla Reddy.

When all these elections were over and the time for cabinet reshuffle came, the sudden development of Etela Rajender’s ouster from TRS forcing Huzurabad bypoll in coming six months saved Malla Reddy again.

Malla Reddy is now trying to exploit this situation to his advantage by making attempts to get closer to KCR and KTR again and save his minister post.

Malla Reddy has made a ‘last ditch effort” to get into the good books of KCR and KTR by luring four Congress corporators in Jawaharnagar municipal corporation and two councillors in Ghatkesar municipality into TRS and got them admitted in TRS today in the presence of KTR at Telangana Bhavan.

KTR praised Malla Reddy for strengthening TRS in Medchal and Malkajgiri Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies.

It remains to be seen whether Malla Reddy’s “last ditch effort” will help him to save his minister post this time.