With a year-and-half left for the UP Assembly polls in 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to correctly tick all the boxes and hence the Yogi Adityanath Government is set to carry out another Ministry expansion.
“There are vacancies in the government. Two Cabinet Ministers, Chetan Chauhan and Kamla Rani Varun died of Covid-19 while four other seats fell vacant recently. The Chief Minister can accommodate six faces as ministers,” a senior BJP functionary said.
The Ministry expansion is expected soon after the completion of biennial polls to 11 graduate and teachers’ constituencies of UP Legislative Council by December 10.
Sources in the BJP said that the chief minister might affect a minor expansion any time after approval from the Central leadership.
Presently, there are 54 ministers in the Yogi government, including 23 cabinet ministers, nine ministers of state with independent charge and 22 ministers of state. The sources said that the chief minister could induct four to five new ministers and could even promote some of the ministers of state to the cabinet rank.
“Caste factor will be the main criterion for selection of new incumbents and Brahmin and Backward leaders could get importance in the expansion. Besides, new MLAs elected in the recent bypolls could also be given a look in,” the BJP leader said. There is also a possibility of some ministers being dropped as Yogi Adityanath is not satisfied with their performance. In the last expansion in August, 2019, Yogi Adityanath had inducted 18 new ministers and promoted five. At that time, the chief minister dropped five ministers, including senior BJP leader and Finance Minister Rajesh Agarwal, Irrigation Minister Dharampal Singh, Primary Education Minister Anupama Jaiswal and Excise Minister Archana Pandey.
Besides, Transport Minister Swatantra Dev Singh resigned after being appointed the new president of the state BJP unit.