Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inducted four ministers — two from NDA allies and two BJP leaders — into his cabinet Tuesday. This is the first cabinet expansion by the CM since his return to power following the 2022 state assembly elections.
The new cabinet ministers are O.P. Rajbhar from Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), Anil Kumar from Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and Dara Singh Chauhan and Sunil Kumar Sharma from the BJP.
The induction of a Dalit (Kumar), a Brahmin (Sharma), and two OBC ministers (Rajbhar and Chauhan) is likely an attempt by the BJP-led NDA to woo the respective communities ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, said political observers.
Now, the Yogi 2.0 cabinet has 10 ministers each from the OBC and upper castes and two Dalit ministers. OBCs account for 40 percent of the state population, Dalits 21 percent, and Brahmins a little over 9 percent, according to the 2011 Census.
After Yogi won the state polls in March 2022, 53 ministers, including 19 cabinet ministers, 14 ministers with independent charge, and 20 ministers of state, took oath with him. But, five months later, Jat leader Bhupendra Chaudhary had to resign after he became the BJP state president. The strength of the council of ministers dropped to 52.
After Tuesday’s inductions, the strength of the council of ministers reached 56. Along with 22 cabinet ministers, 14 ministers with independent charge and 20 ministers of state are in the council now. Four more vacancies for ministers remain.
The council of ministers has 24 ministers from the upper castes, 20 ministers from the OBC community, and 10 ministers from the SC community. Additionally, a Sikh and a Muslim minister represent the two minority communities.
Also read: BSP faces exodus as its MPs seek greener pastures amid party’s ‘suicidal ekla chalo’ policy for 2024
O.P. Rajbhar’s return to cabinet
SBSP chief Rajbhar’s return to the state cabinet comes five years after he resigned from the Yogi 1.0 cabinet.
Rajbhar had resigned after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the SBSP fought the 2022 UP assembly polls as part of the Samajwadi Party(SP)-led Mahagathbandhan. However, Rajbhar rejoined the NDA in July 2023.
SBSP commands influence over the Rajbhar community, along with the Dhangar, Pal, Prajapati, Arkvanshi, and Sonar communities, in eastern UP. The Rajbhar community comes under the OBC category and holds sway in over 20 assembly constituencies in eastern UP districts, including Ghazipur, Mau, Ballia and Azamgarh, where over 40,000 community members are a deciding factor. The BJP is looking to gain more ground in the region.
SBSP fought the 2017 state election with the BJP and won four seats. But, Rajbhar parted ways with the BJP when asked to fight the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Ghosi on a BJP ticket. He resigned from the Yogi 1.0 cabinet in May that year. At the time, he alleged the BJP wanted to finish SBSP. Spoiling the NDA poll plot, SBSP fielded 39 candidates in the 2019 election.
Rajbhar contested the 2022 state election as a part of the SP-led Mahagathbandhan from the Zahoorabad constituency in Ghazipur district. He won the seat, with a vote share of over 46 percent. SBSP won six seats in the eastern UP region (Purvanchal). Known for its economic backwardness, Purvanchal is where the SP-SBSP alliance made major gains and won 42 out of 107 seats.
Later, Rajbhar made several statements against Akhilesh Yadav and the SP, returning to the NDA fold in July 2023.
Since then, Rajbhar has been demanding ministership in the Yogi government and even declared he would not allow the notification for the 2024 Lok Sabha election till his induction.
The Rajbhar community is influential in certain Lok Sabha seats of eastern UP, like Ambedkar Nagar, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Sant Kabir Nagar, and Salempur.
‘Serial turncoat’ Dara Singh Chauhan
Dara Singh Chauhan, like Rajbhar, is having a ‘ghar-wapsi’ of sorts.
Chauhan served as the forest minister in the Yogi 1.0 government but quit in January 2022. In a dramatic move ahead of the UP assembly elections that year, Chauhan, along with OBC leaders Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, quit their ministership and joined the SP.
Maurya and Saini lost in that election, but Chauhan clinched a win from the Ghosi assembly seat. Over a year later, he resigned from his assembly membership on 15 July, 2023, necessitating a bypoll.
Chauhan lost that bypoll to SP’s Sudhakar Singh and rejoined the BJP two days later. Top leaders of the BJP, including Yogi Adityanath, deputy CM Brajesh Pathak and BJP ally O.P. Rajbhar had campaigned for the election.
Chauhan forayed into student politics as a Congress worker and served as vice-president of Azamgarh’s Dayanand PG College.
He has a history of switching sides and has changed parties at least six times.
“In the 1990s, he joined the BSP, which sent him to Rajya Sabha as an MP in 1996. But after completing the four-year term, he switched to the SP and became a Rajya Sabha MP for the second time in 2000. Before the 2007 state election, he switched to the BSP again when the Mayawati-led party formed a government with a full majority. However, in February 2015, he switched to the BJP,” said an SP leader from Ghosi to ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
Also read: 2 birds, 1 stone: Cross-voting by SP MLAs queers pitch for Gandhis in Amethi, Rae Bareli
Sunil Kumar Sharma
Four-time MLA Sunil Kumar Sharma is the BJP’s popular Brahmin face from western UP and a record-holder MLA. Having started his political career as a BJP MLA from Ghaziabad in 2007, Sharma lost to BSP’s Amarpal Sharma in the 2012 state election from the adjoining Sahibabad constituency. In the subsequent elections, he won the seat thrice.
Sahibabad, the assembly seat with the highest number of voters in UP (10.2 lakh) holds the key to the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency. It has nearly 35 percent of the LS constituency’s voters as residents.
Sharma registered a massive win over the rival Congress candidate in the 2017 state election, with a margin of 1.5 lakh votes. He was then appointed president of the Panchayati Raj committee of the UP legislative assembly and given the status of state minister.
He broke his record and registered the biggest win from the Sahibabad constituency in the 2022 state election. He defeated closest rival Amarpal Sharma, then with the SP, by 2.14 lakh votes. That made him the assembly election winner with the highest margin of votes in the country in the India Book of Records.
Sharma enjoys popularity among the upper caste voters, especially Brahmins, and has been uneasy ever since he was denied a ministerial berth in 2022. A ministerial berth to him now is being seen as a bid to woo the Brahmin community of West UP.
RLD’s SC face Anil Kumar
RLD’s Anil Kumar, who belongs to the SC community, is a third-time MLA from Muzaffarnagar’s Purkazi assembly constituency and hails from Saharanpur.
Having started his career with the BSP, Kumar became MLA for the first time in 2007 from the Charthawal assembly seat.
When the Purkazi (SC) seat came into existence after delimitation, he won the 2012 UP assembly election on a BSP ticket. But he lost the 2017 election to BJP’s Pramod Utwal. In the 2022 election, Kumar defeated Utwal and won the seat on an RLD ticket.
On Tuesday, Kumar beat two senior RLD leaders, including Budhana MLA Rajpal Baliyan, to become a minister.
Party sources said Kumar had been associated with the SP and fought the 2022 assembly elections on an alliance ticket but has remained steadfast with the RLD after Jayant Chaudhary decided to part ways with the INDIA alliance.
“What worked for him is the fact that he he comes from the SC community,” said an RLD leader.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)