Uttar Pradesh Likely to Get its Third Deputy CM as Yogi Adityanath Expands Cabinet Today

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will have its first cabinet reshuffle and expansion on Wednesday and is likely to get its third deputy chief minister.

Uttar Pradesh already has two deputy chief ministers in the UP Cabinet —Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma. The latest move is being seen as an attempt to further consolidate grassroot politics in the state ahead of 2022 assembly polls.

In the cabinet expansion, scheduled for 11am on Wednesday, more than a dozen new faces are expected to be sworn in as ministers. Seven existing ministers are also likely to be elevated based on their performance so far. Souces told News 18 that caste equations will also be kept in mind as they may play a crucial role in the state assembly polls.

The new faces which could be sworn in as ministers include Neelima Katiyar, Shriram Chauhan, Anand Shukla, Ashok Katiyar, Satish Chandra Dwivedi, GS Dharmesh, Chandrika Upadhyay, Mahesh Chandra Gupta, Vijay Kashyap, Vinay Shakya, Ramnaresh Agnihotri, Dalbahadur Kori, Chaudhary Udhaybhan, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Ram Shankar Patel, Ravindra Jaiswal and Ashish Patel.

The name of Noida MLA and defence minister Rajnath Singh’s son, Pankaj Singh, is also doing the rounds for the post of cabinet minister along with Anil Rajbhar, Ashish Singh Ashu and Neelima Katiyar.

Meanwhile, ministers Rajesh Agarwal, Anupama Jaiswal, Dharam Pal Singh and Archana Pandey tendered their resignations on Tuesday evening ahead of the first expansion of the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.

There are currently 43 ministers, including Adityanath, two deputy chief ministers — Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma — nine ministers of state with independent charge, and 13 ministers of state.

Three ministers — Rita Bahuguna Joshi from Allahabad, SP Singh Baghel from Agra and Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur — were elected to the Lok Sabha, while Suheldeo Bharatiya Samaj Party president Om Prakash Rajbhar was recently removed from the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, former chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has claimed that UP government's latest move is aimed at diverting people's attention from its failures. "The BJP government has failed in every front and now it wants to run away from its responsibilities by transferring officers. On the other hand, the BJP wants to divert people's attention through Cabinet expansion. People are simply fed up of this diversion politics by the BJP," he wrote in a series of tweets.