In Yogi cabinet 2.0, 21 ministers retained, 22 dropped, 31 new faces and 5 women

Yogi Adityanath on Friday was sworn in as Uttar Pradesh chief minister for a second term in a grand ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top BJP leaders at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana stadium in Lucknow.

Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak were sworn in as deputy chief ministers. Pathak, a cabinet minister in the first Yogi government, was elevated and replaced Dinesh Sharma as one of the two deputy CMs. Maurya, the OBC face of the BJP in UP, retained his place.

Adityanath, who is also the head priest of Gorakhnath Mutt, is the 33rd chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. He is the first CM of the most populous state to win a second successive term after completing a full five-year tenure.

Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel administered the oath to Yogi Adityanath and his 52-member team, including two deputy chief ministers, 16 other cabinet ministers, 14 ministers of state (independent charge) and 20 ministers of state.

Twenty-one ministers of the previous Adityanath government have been retained and 22 ministers have been dropped. There are 31 new faces in the new cabinet that also include five women ministers.

Missing from the Yogi Adityanath 2.0 government are Mahendra Singh, Jal Shakti minister in the previous government, Shrikant Sharma, who was the state’s energy minister from Mathura, Ashutosh Tandon, the incumbent urban development minister, Siddharth Nath Singh, who was the MSME minister and health minister Jai Pratap Singh. They will now be accommodated in the organisation. The buzz is that former industries minister Satish Mahana or former excise minister Ram Naresh Agnihotri, could be made the speaker of the 18th assembly though a final decision hasn’t been taken on this yet.

The new government also includes state BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, the party’s state general secretary JPS Rathore and state vice president Arvind Kumar Sharma. All three have been made cabinet ministers.

Another state vice president Daya Shankar Singh has been made minister of state (independent charge). This now means that a rejig of the state BJP organization is in the offing. This development, political experts feel, may be likely with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in mind.

The BJP also replaced Mohsin Raza, its lone Muslim face in the first Adityanath government, with Danish Azad Ansari, the state secretary of the party’s minority cell.

Azad has been named the minister of state. He, along with Baldev Aulakh, a Sikh minister of state and a second-time lawmaker from Bisalpur assembly segment of Rampur, will now be the minority faces of the Adityanath government.

Those present on the occasion included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, top BJP leaders, chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, seers, actors, beneficiaries of various government schemes, party workers and others.

“It’s a government that shows hard work has been rewarded,” said UP BJP spokesperson Harish Srivastava.

“You would have seen how Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Yogi Adityanath got up to accept greetings each time a new minister approached them after taking oath. This showcases how our leadership remains humble and sensitive. This is one approach that the government and the party have imbibed over the years,” he added.

The Yogi government 2.0 can have a maximum of 60 ministers. Suresh Khanna, the senior most member of the BJP legislature party, has been made a cabinet minister again. He won his ninth assembly election from Shahjahanpur and had proposed Adityanath’s name as chief minister at the legislature party meeting on Thursday.

Former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya, a Jatav Dalit, has been made a cabinet minister. She had won her first assembly polls from Agra Rural constituency.

The BJP’s allies have been represented too. Apna Dal (Sonelal) leader Ashish Patel, an MLC and husband of Union minister of state Anupriya Patel, has been made a cabinet minister. Nishad party chief Sanjay Nishad, an MLC, has also been inducted into the cabinet.