CM inducts 7 more ministers Jitin Prasada takes oath as cabinet minister

In a politically significant move to balance the caste equation in his council of ministers ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly election next year, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expanded his cabinet by inducting seven new faces on Sunday.

The new faces include three from Other Backward Classes, two Dalits, one each of Scheduled Tribe and Brahmin.

Jitin Prasada (Brahmin), Chhatrapal Singh Gangwar (Kurmi), Paltu Ram (Dalit), Sangita Balwant Bind (OBC), Sanjeev Kumar (Schedule Tribe), Dinesh Khatik (SC) and Dharmvir Prajapati (OBC) were inducted into the state cabinet, which took the strength of ministers in Uttar Pradesh to 60.

Jitin Prasada took oath as a cabinet minister while the others were sworn in as ministers of state (MoS). The oath was administered by Governor Anandiben Patel at a function held in the Gandhi auditorium of the Raj Bhawan in the presence of the chief minister.

UP now has 60 ministers with the induction of seven more faces as per the constitutional limit. Out of these, 24 are cabinet ministers, including the chief minister.

The cabinet was expanded for the first time earlier on August 22, 2019. Several new faces were then included in the cabinet, while some were dropped. There were 56 ministers in the UP council of ministers then. Three ministers died of COVID-19. Recently, Minister of State Vijay Kumar Kashyap died, while Cabinet ministers Chetan Chauhan and Kamal Rani Varun died in the first wave of COVID-19.

In the first cabinet expansion, six ministers with independent charge were administered the oath.

Brahmin leader Jitin Prasada was inducted into the Bharatiya Janata Party earlier this year amid its internal worries about the thin representation of the community in the party. He has been made a cabinet minister in the Yogi government. Prasada’s entry is meant to help the BJP reset the optics of the Yogi Adityanath government, perceived by a section of state’s Brahmins as being pro-Thakur (the chief minister’s caste). Brahmins make up about 13 per cent of UP’s voters and are an influential chunk that has steadily gravitated from Congress towards the BJP over the years.

Earlier, the name of Sanjay Nishad, whose party Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal (NISHAD) will contest the 2022 UP assembly elections in alliance with the BJP, was also making rounds along with the name of former Uttarakhand Governor Baby Rani Maurya to be inducted into the Yogi cabinet.

It is to be mentioned that BJP is making every bid to make a caste balance in the government. In the expansion of the Narendra Modi cabinet on July 8 this year also, special preference was given to the leaders from Uttar Pradesh. In this, an attempt was also made to cultivate caste mathematics. Out of the seven new ministers made from UP at the Centre, four were from OBC, two Dalits and one from Brahmin community. This was the first time that a record 15 ministers were from UP in the Modi cabinet.