UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s New Cabinet Formed

Yogi Adityanath was sworn in as Uttar Pradesh‘s chief minister for the second time on Friday, leading a team that includes 32 new faces and Brajesh Pathak as the new deputy chief minister, who established a great campaign at Dinesh Sharma’s expense. 

Despite his defeat, BJP has retained Keshav Prasad Maurya as Yogi’s deputy but notable names such as Ashutosh ‘Gopal’ Tandon, Mahendra Singh, Shrikant Sharma and Siddarth Nath Singh have been eliminated from the cabinet.  

Former Gujarat-cadre IAS officer and PM Modi’s trusted bureaucrat AK Sharma has been named as cabinet minister, and Kanpur police commissioner and 1994-batch IPS officer Asim Arun, has been appointed as one of the 14 junior ministers with independent charge in the ministry.

Yogi’s new ministry sworn in their oaths on Friday at a mega event at the grand Ekana stadium.  

The saffron star cast, led by PM Modi, attended the event, which conveyed a promise to maintain the balance between the upper castes and non-Yadav backwards, who were instrumental in the BJP’s successful rebuttal to the Akhilesh Yadav-led opposition in the elections. 

The retention of Keshav Maurya as deputy CM affirms to his merits as the party’s OBC face. 

While Pathak’s selection as the other deputy signals a significant step forward for the recent BSP import who has now outshined old Brahmin faces from within the fold. 

Women Members in the Cabinet

• Following the trend of the previous term, this time as well only five women have been included in the ministry.  
• Party’s renowned Jatav face and former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya is also a part of the ministry.  
• However, there is a possibility of inclusion of more women later on, like the last time as Yogi still has space for at least eight more ministerial associates. 
• Gulab Devi, a five-time MLA from Sambhal, Pratibha Shukla, Rajni Tiwari, and Vijay Laxmi Gautam are the other female ministers. 
• Both of the BJP’s partners, the Apna Dal and the Nishad Party, have gained cabinet places, with Union minister Anupriya Patel’s husband Ashish and Sanjay Nishad. The BJP has replaced Shia Mohsin Raja with Sunni Danish Azad Ansari, a former ABVP functionary. 

The Ceremony

• Flowers, cutouts, and posters of Prime Minister Modi, Union Minister Amit Shah, BJP Chief JP Nadda, and Yogi himself adorned the Ekana stadium, which was filled with about 70,000 party activists. 
• PM Modi, Shah, Nadda, and plenty of other senior party officials sat happily in the audience. 
• Chiefs of 11 other BJP-run states, entrepreneurs, movie stars, and dharmacharyas from various sects and monasteries were among the other dignitaries who graced the occasion with their presence.  

 Significance of the Win for Yogi  

• The oath ceremony became a historical moment for Yogi, the peethadeshwar of Gorakshapeeth, as he became the only political figure in UP to return to office after a five-year term.  
• Before Yogi, only Govind Vallabh Pant (1952), Dr. Sampoornand (1957), Chandra Bhanu Gupta (1962), Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna (1974), and Narayan Dutt Tewari (1985) have previously taken over as UP chief minister, although their terms were only two years long. 
• Yogi, who was born on June 5, 1972, in Pauri Garwhal’s Panchur village (Uttarakhand), abandoned material world before turning to spirituality in the early 1990s. 
•  According to his UP Vidhan Sabha record, he became Gorakshapeeth’s successor at the age of 22 on February 15, 1994, and subsequently chief priest after his master, Mahant Avaidyanath, died in September 2014. 

 Published By: Manan Khurana

Edited By: Khushi Thakur