Yogi Adityanath Govt 2.0 LIVE Updates: In Uttar Pradesh, 31 new faces have been included in the cabinet of the second government of Yogi Adityanath, while 21 from the team of the previous government have been given place again. In view of the 2024 general elections, the new cabinet has struck a balance between experienced and young leaders. The structure of Yogi’s second government strikes a fine balance between caste equations and regions to further consolidate his hold on politically important Uttar Pradesh.
There are 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Of the 52-member council of ministers of the Yogi government, 36 ministers are between 40-60 years of age, while two are below 40 and 12 are above 60 years of age. Minister of State (Independent Charge) Arun Kumar Saxena, a third-time MLA from Bareilly, is the eldest at 73, while his colleague of the same rank, Sandeep Singh, grandson of veteran BJP leader Kalyan Singh, is the youngest at 31.
Many ministers in the new UP cabinet are graduates and post graduates, while there are some who have studied only up to class eight. The new team comprises 19 electorally influential Other Backward Classes (OBC) ministers, seven each of Thakurs and Brahmins, Dalits (8), Vaishyas (4), besides one Muslim and one Sikh. The list of ministers who took oath on Friday shows that for geographical representation, this time there are 23 ministers from western UP, 12 more than the previous cabinet. This time there are 14 ministers from Eastern UP, which is three less than the previous government.
12 ministers have been made from the central part of the state, which is one less than the last time. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma is among the nine cabinet ministers of the government who did not find a place in the cabinet this time. Others who did not find a place in the new ministry are Satish Mahana, Ramapati Shastri, Jai Pratap Shahi, Siddharth Nath Singh and Shrikant Sharma.
Baby Rani Maurya, Jaiveer Singh, IAS-turned-politician AK Sharma, Rakesh Sachan have been included as cabinet ministers besides Ashish Patel of Do-Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Sanjay Nishad of Nishad Party. The new faces in the Ministers of State (Independent Charge) include Asim Arun, who quit as an IPS officer to join politics. Apart from this, Daya Shankar Singh, who has been in the headlines due to a dispute with his wife Swati Singh (former minister), is also involved.
A look at the ministers’ educational background reveals that while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath himself is a graduate, his two deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brijesh Pathak are also graduates. AK Sharma, Jitin Prasad, Anil Rajbhar, Rakesh Sachan and Yogendra Upadhyay have post graduate degrees. Nand Gopal Nandi, Sanjay Nishad and Jaiveer Singh are intermediate pass outs. In Minister of State (Independent Charge) JPS Rathore is MTech while Dharamveer Prajapati is 8th pass.
In Minister of State, Somendra S Tomar has done PhD while Dinesh Khatik and Rakesh Rathore have studied up to class VIII. There are five women in the new cabinet, including baby Rani Maurya. Also there is a Muslim as Danish Azad Ansari and a Sikh minister as Baldev Singh Aulakh, both ministers of state.