The Kiran Kumar Reddy Cabinet got down to work on Thursday and gave a year-ending gift to the state government employees, hiking their Dearness Allowance to 8.56 per cent.
The hiked DA from July to November would be adjusted with the General Provident Fund, and would be paid out in cash along with the December salary.
Briefing newspersons on the decisions of the first meeting of the Kiran Cabinet, the minister said the government would incur an additional expenditure of `1,488 crore annually due to the hiked DA.
The decision came a few hours after the chief minister asked restive government employees to give him time to resolve their problems. All ministers except Mr Vatti Vasanth Kumar turned up for the Cabinet meeting after the discontented ones were assured by party seniors and Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy that their grievances would be reso-lved and that a few changes in allocation of business among ministers would be done in due course.
Mr Kumar took back his resignation to the Assembly, but stayed away from the Cabinet. Though the CM invited some of these ministers for a meeting at the secretariat in the morning, the ministers decided to meet at the residence of Botsa Satyanarayana.
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Angry MLA stays out of Cabinet
AGE Correspondent
Hyderabad
Dec. 2: Mr Vatti Vasanth Kumar, who had resigned from the just-formed Cabinet on Wednesday night for being allotted a non-significant portfolio (tourism & youth affairs), stuck to his stand and stayed away from the first Cabinet meeting on Thursday evening. He, however, said that he remained loyal to the Congress and would meet party president Mrs Sonia Gandhi and explain the reasons for his resignation to her.
However, following the intervention of the party high command, Mr Kumar spoke to deputy speaker Mr Nadendla Manohar over phone and requested him to treat his resignation from the Legislative Assembly as withdrawn.