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Published Oct 15, 2025 | 7:29 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 15, 2025 | 7:29 PM
Minister Konda Surekha was reportedly unaware of her OSD's exit.
As it turns out, even the tiniest cog can rattle an entire political machine. N. Sumanth, the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Endowments Minister Konda Surekha, has just learnt the hard way what happens when ambition spins faster than the system can handle.
Though technically appointed by the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB), Sumanth has been full-time “on Her Majesty’s Service,” as the grapevine gleefully calls it.
Apparently, the Board had had enough. His contract—meant to run till December 2025—was abruptly cut short after a few well-aimed complaints fluttered up to the Chief Minister’s Office. The charges ranged from “creative interference” in departmental functioning to an unusually charitable view of certain pollution-friendly companies.
When the CMO’s phone rang, the chief minister, by all accounts, saw red light flashing and ordered an inquiry by the chief secretary. The axe soon followed. And just when you thought the story couldn’t get any spicier, whispers surfaced that Sumanth had been turning the screws on engineers handling Medaram Jatara development works—allegedly for reasons that needed no divine explanation.
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, quick to spot smoke before it turned into yet another raging fire, wasted no time in showing the OSD the door. With the Congress already battling the image of ministers allegedly quarrelling over commissions, one more scandal was clearly one too many.
Whether Sumanth acted solo or under a gentle nudge from higher-up remains a mystery. But the fallout was anything but subtle. Secretariat gossip mills whirred overtime, suggesting his dismissal was less about administrative hygiene and more about corruption-control therapy.
Whispers over coffee grew louder, hinting at “procedural lapses” in pollution-clearance files and selective approvals that seemed to carry a suspicious financial fragrance. To top it off, insiders say Minister Surekha herself was blissfully unaware that her trusted aide had been booted out—proof, perhaps, that in politics, surprises rarely come gift-wrapped.
Sumanth, appointed OSD in December 2023 and re-engaged till 2025, now finds himself out of the system faster than one can say “departmental inquiry.”
