Revanth Reddy Drops Konda Surekha and Names Three BC Women

Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy asked Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla on September 3, 2026, to drop Forest and Endowments Minister Konda Surekha from the Cabinet. The Chief Minister’s Office said the recommendation had already gone to Raj Bhavan, and it cancelled G. Chinna Reddy’s post as vice-chairman of the Telangana Planning Board in the same note.

The public trigger was a speech by Surekha’s daughter, Konda Sushmita Patel, over the Parkal Assembly ticket. The same note then named three Backward Class women to high offices, which is how a family fight was turned into a caste and faction settlement before the Governor had even signed.

Sushmita Patel Challenged Revanth Reddy Over Parkal

The trouble began on August 19 at a birthday meeting in Geesugonda, Surekha’s native place. Sushmita, who has been pushing for the Parkal seat in the 2028 election, tore into Revanth Reddy for backing sitting MLA Revuri Prakash Reddy, who is 74.

Who is Revanth to decide my ticket?

Konda Sushmita Patel, at the Geesugonda meeting

She told the chief minister to make Prakash Reddy resign at once and face her in a by-election, and she said that if Congress denied her a ticket she would run as an Independent. She went further: “Whether you, your father, or your grandfather come, I will be the MLA of Parkal.”

She accused Revanth of turning the state unit into a “TDP Congress,” claimed her parents had helped him become Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief in 2021, and alleged a Rs 200 crore land deal linked to the chief minister’s brother. Those land charges remain her claims, not findings. Party legislators wanted to know why a Cabinet minister had not shut the speech down.

The TPCC disciplinary committee, headed by Nagarkurnool MP Mallu Ravi, gave Surekha three days to explain. She wrote that the words were her daughter’s personal views. Sushmita, she said, is married and lives her own life, and a mother cannot be punished for that. The panel watched the video, rejected the distance she tried to keep, and sent a report to the All India Congress Committee recommending that she leave the Cabinet. Chinna Reddy’s Planning Board job was in the same report.

After Kharge, Surekha Turned on the Chief Minister

On August 28, six days before the Governor file, Surekha went to the chief minister’s house for Raksha Bandhan and tied him a rakhi, with Women and Child Welfare Minister Seethakka. Revanth posted the ritual as a festival greeting. State legislators did not treat it as a truce. For them the Konda family was still challenging the leadership in Warangal.

Revanth met AICC general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal in Delhi on September 1 and pressed for a hard line. TPCC president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud and AICC Telangana in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan were in the same round of talks. Surekha was summoned too. She met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on September 2, then walked out and attacked the chief minister in front of cameras.

“I have told the Congress leadership everything I have to say. The party leaders said they would think about it,” she said. She added, “Action should be taken against the Chief Minister before action is taken against me,” pointing to his public line that he would remain chief minister for 10 years. She said she had put her case in writing to Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Venugopal.

WHAT SUREKHA ASKED DELHI TO WEIGH

• The 10-year line: She asked why Revanth’s claim that he would stay chief minister for a decade had drawn no party notice.
• Notices both ways: She said MLAs and MLCs who had spoken against her should get show-cause notices as well.
• Other ministers: She asked what the state unit would do about allegations around the families of Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka.
• Caste test: She asked whether Congress was using one standard for a BC woman and another for other groups.

She also said nobody had yet asked her to resign and that she was waiting for the AICC. Party sources said the high command had already wanted a quiet resignation, and that she had refused, which left Revanth the option of writing to the Governor.

A group of 19 Congress MLAs, MLCs and senior leaders had already demanded action at a Hyderabad briefing, among them Warangal West MLA Naini Rajender Reddy and Government Whip Beerla Ilaiah. Warangal legislators had met separately and asked for her removal. That pressure did not ease after the rakhi.

Chinna Reddy Is the Other Name on the File

Chinna Reddy is not a footnote in a daughter’s speech. He is a four-time legislator, a former minister from the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy years, and a Congressman since Indira Gandhi’s time. The party panel cited videos of him attacking the party and Wanaparthy MLA Tudi Megha Reddy, a former BRS mandal leader who took the 2023 ticket Chinna Reddy believed he had been promised.

Today, the leaders from other parties are insured from disciplinary action and assured of Revanth’s indulgence than us who have been with the party during its leanest phase.

G. Chinna Reddy, former minister and Planning Board vice-chairman

He called the survey that gave Megha Reddy the seat a “make-believe” exercise and said the new MLA had come over as a contractor from the previous regime, bringing little cadre. That grievance sits inside a wider split that state legislators now tag in private as “Pacha Congress,” the old loyalists, against a “Yellow Congress League” of leaders who crossed from the Telugu Desam Party around the 2023 election, with former BRS faces in the same argument.

Jadcherla MLA Anirudh Reddy has asked why bills from former TDP and BRS MLAs are cleared while his contractors wait, and has talked of a hunger strike. Munugode MLA Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy has kept attacking what he calls partiality toward new MLAs. Neither man was removed from a government post on September 3. Chinna Reddy was. The whip landed on the old-guard voice who had said joiners were “insured,” not on every Reddy who has criticised the chief minister in public.

Pavan Nerella, a senior Congress functionary, has said Delhi wants more nominated posts for old Congressmen, even talking of a Karnataka-style split that would give them three-quarters of those jobs. The Planning Board order runs the other way for Chinna Reddy: the post is gone, and a BC woman with Cabinet rank is in his chair.

Revanth Named Three BC Women the Same Afternoon

The CMO did not stop at the two exits. It named Gadwal Vijayalakshmi, a BC leader and former GHMC mayor, as vice-chairperson of the Planning Board with Cabinet rank; Nerella Sharada as chairperson of the Telangana State Commission for Women; and former Rajya Sabha member G. Sudha Rani as chairperson of the Kakatiya Urban Development Authority. Sudha Rani is from Warangal, Surekha’s home district.

THE SAME-DAY SHUFFLE

The state information department had already named her Women Commission chairperson in May, when Vijayalakshmi got that statutory post. The September 3 note moves her up to a Cabinet-rank planning job and puts Sharada into the women’s chair. Sudha Rani, Warangal mayor from 2021 who left the BRS and joined Congress in 2024, now holds the urban body that sits on Surekha’s home turf.

Congress has pledged 42% reservation for Backward Classes, and BC groups had already warned against dropping a prominent BC woman from the Cabinet. Surekha is Padmasali; her husband, former MLC Konda Murali, is Munnur Kapu. Both groups have weight across the state. Naming three BC women in one afternoon is the reply to that warning. It is also a Warangal reply: another BC woman from the district gets a visible post before critics can say the Konda family was erased.

The arithmetic is blunt. One BC woman leaves the Council of Ministers; three BC women take boards and commissions, one with Cabinet rank. That is not a coincidence of paperwork. It is the caste ledger being updated in public, in the same communication that announces the punishment.

Warangal’s Faction Fight Did Not Start in August

Surekha is a five-time MLA, twice from the old Shyamapet seat, once from Parkal, twice from Warangal East. She entered the AICC in 2000, served in Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s Cabinet in 2009 as minister for women and child welfare, and quit the K. Rosaiah Cabinet after YSR died in a helicopter crash on September 2, 2009, because she wanted Jagan Mohan Reddy as chief minister. She joined YSRCP, lost a by-election, entered the then TRS before 2014, won Warangal East, fell out with that leadership, joined Congress ahead of 2018, and returned to the Assembly in 2023 from Warangal East as minister for forests, environment and endowments.

State Congress leaders still treat her as an outsider with her own base. The Kondas have fought other Warangal faces for years, including Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, MLA Kadiyam Srihari, and Naini Rajender Reddy. In July 2026 she wrote to the chief minister after Srihari held an endowments review without her. In 2025 her camp clashed over Medaram Jatara works and over a late-night police visit to her house about her former officer on special duty, N. Sumanth. Sushmita then alleged that Reddy leaders were targeting a BC family.

In October 2024 Surekha dragged BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao into the Naga Chaitanya-Samantha Ruth Prabhu divorce, then apologised. In May 2025 a speech in which she talked about ministers taking money for files blew up, and she said she had been speaking about the previous government. The August speech did not land on a clean slate. The party panel said it had weighed older complaints from Warangal legislators that she did not consult them on works and committees.

FROM GEESUGONDA TO RAJ BHAVAN

1. August 19, 2026: Sushmita attacks Revanth Reddy and Revuri Prakash Reddy at the Geesugonda birthday meeting.
2. August 20, 2026: The TPCC panel seeks Surekha’s explanation in three days; she asks that the notice be withdrawn.
3. August 21, 2026: Nineteen Congress legislators and senior leaders demand action in Hyderabad.
4. August 25, 2026: Mallu Ravi’s panel sends its report to Mahesh Kumar Goud, recommending Surekha’s exit from the Cabinet and Chinna Reddy’s exit from the Planning Board.
5. August 28, 2026: Surekha ties a rakhi to Revanth Reddy at his residence.
6. September 1-2, 2026: Revanth meets Venugopal; Surekha meets Kharge and then attacks the chief minister on camera.
7. September 3, 2026: Revanth sends the removal recommendation to Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla and announces the Planning Board, Women Commission and KUDA changes.

Fifteen days separate the birthday speech from the Governor file. The Parkal ticket is still two years away. The party chose not to wait for 2028, and it chose not to wait for Surekha to condemn her daughter.

What the Governor Still Has to Sign

A minister does not leave office because a chief minister says so on television. Under Article 164 of the Constitution of India’s official text, the chief minister is appointed by the Governor, the other ministers are appointed by the Governor on the chief minister’s advice, and they hold office during the Governor’s pleasure. In practice that pleasure follows the chief minister’s advice. Shukla was expected to act on the file on September 3. As of the CMO note, the political decision was public; the formal order was still the Governor’s.

Surekha did not accept the manner of it. After the note circulated she said she had not been shown a proper communication. “I have not received this as of now. There is no signature, no letterhead, only a white paper. I think it is not correct,” she said. She also said, “I was not given a chance to explain myself before this decision. My daughter’s remarks were her personal views and had nothing to do with me.” She asked why the file had gone to the Governor without consulting her, and said she had written to Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the party leadership because she believed she had been unfairly targeted.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The political decision: The CMO has announced that Surekha will be dropped and that Chinna Reddy’s Planning Board appointment is cancelled.
• The replacements: Vijayalakshmi, Sharada and Sudha Rani have been named to the Planning Board, the Women Commission and KUDA.
• The legal step: Removal from the Council of Ministers still requires the Governor’s order under Article 164.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The signed order: Raj Bhavan had not, in public, confirmed that Shukla had signed the removal when the CMO note went out.
• A party suspension: The state panel’s report went to the AICC; any suspension from Congress is a separate call from the Cabinet file.
• A Cabinet replacement: No new minister was named for forests, environment and endowments in the same note. Delhi has talked about a wider reshuffle and vacant berths, without a list.

Shukla had been in hospital in late August after chest pain and a stent. The CMO still presented September 3 as the day for a decision. If the order is signed, Surekha is out of the Council of Ministers whether or not she accepts the paper she was shown. If it is delayed, she remains a minister in law while the party has already announced her political end.

The daughter’s Parkal dare gave Revanth a clean charge sheet. The file he sent the Governor does more than close that charge sheet. It removes the old Congressman who said joiners were protected, and it fills three BC women’s posts so Warangal cannot say a Padmasali minister was cut down with no one put in her place. Surekha is still arguing that the paper is blank where a letterhead should be. The caste and faction ledger, in the CMO note, is already filled in.