New Delhi, March 25
Yogi Adityanath on Friday took oath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister for the second term at a mega ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and JP Nadda. Chief Ministers of party ruled states and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar were also present on the occasion.
Yogi was sworn in along with 52 ministers, including Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brijesh Pathak as Deputy CMs, all hand-picked by Modi and Shah keeping in mind regional and caste equations and giving representation to all sections.
The Yogi 2.0 council has 16 Cabinet ministers, 14 ministers of state with independent charge and 20 ministers of state. There are 31 new faces in the government. Twenty-four ministers from the first term have been dropped.
While the party has retained top OBC leader Keshav Prasad Maurya despite him losing his seat, several big names, including Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma and cabinet ministers Shrikant Sharma and Sidharth Nath Singh, were dropped.
Shrikant Sharma’s name is, however, doing the rounds for the post of UP state president. The buzz is that after party president JP Nadda completes his term, some names from UP may figure in the organisation headed by the new chief.
PM’s close confidante and former bureaucrat AK Sharma has also made it as the UP Cabinet. The inclusion of AK Sharma, an MLC, is an acknowledgement of his handling of the second wave of Covid-19 in Varanasi/Purvanchal region.
Among the new ministers are former Uttarakhand Governor Baby Rani Maurya and Jitin Prasada, Brahmin leader who quit the Congress last year. Former police officer Aseem Arun and Kalyan Singh’s grandson Sandeep Singh have been included as ministers of state (independent charge).
Those dropped include Mohsin Raza, Ram Naresh Agnihotri, Ashok Kataria, Jai Prakash Nishad, Ramapati Shastri, Neelkanth Tiwari and Ashutosh Tandon.
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