Six new faces in Yogi cabinet as BJP seeks to set caste equations right before 2027 polls

Lucknow: Six new ministers were inducted in the much awaited expansion of the Yogi Adityanath cabinet on Sunday taking the number of ministers in the state to 60.

The new faces included Samajwadi Party (SP) rebel Manoj Pandey, Bhupendra Choudhary, Krishna Paswan, Hansraj Vishwakarma, Surendra Singh Diler and Kailash Rajput.

Two ministers of state Ajeet Pal and Somendra Tomar were promoted and given independent charge of their departments.

The new ministers were administered oath of office and secrecy at the Rajbhavan by the state governor Anandiben Patel.

The choice of the newly inducted ministers, clearly revealed that the BJP had sought to set the caste and regional equations right before the next assembly polls which were due in 2027.

While one of the new ministers hailed from the Brahmin community, there were three OBCs and two dalits among them.

The saffron party has sought to placate the ‘brahmin’ community by inducting Pandey into the cabinet.

His inclusion comes in the wake of a meeting by the brahmin MLAs of the Party where many of them complained that their community was being sidelined and pushed to the margins in the state.

Besides, by including Krishna Paswan, an MLA from Fatehpur district and a dalit, the BJP has tried to expand its reach into the non-jatav dalit community.

The ‘Paswan’ community was considered to be influential on several assembly seats in the central UP and Bundelkhand region. Surendra Singh Diler was another new face who hailed from dalit community.

Interestingly, as many as three newly inducted ministers were from the western region of the state and their inclusion was being viewed as an attempt to give more representation to the region where the BJP had fared badly in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

‘’BJP has made an attempt to counter the PDA (pichda, dalit, alpsankhyak) formula of the SP, which had paid it (SP) rich electoral dividends in the 2024 LS polls...though there is no alpsankhyak among the new ministers, there are three from the OBC community and two from dalit community,’’ said a Lucknow based political analyst.

SP president Akhilesh Yadav, however, took potshots at the expansion stating that the current dispensation had nothing else to do. ‘’What will these ministers be able to do in the next few months?,’’ he said.