Lucknow: The much-anticipated expansion of the Yogi Adityanath cabinet in Uttar Pradesh is set to be delayed by a month at least, with government sources telling ThePrint that it will happen only after the pran pratishtha of Ram Lalla’s idol at the under-construction Ram temple in Ayodhya on 22 January.
There are seven vacancies in UP’s council of ministers, which has a total strength of 60.
However, Yogi is said to be reluctant to induct Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar and former Ghosi MLA Dara Singh Chauhan, as desired by the high command, because they had quit his government to join hands with the BJP’s rivals ahead of the 2022 assembly election.
Both are said to wield influence among their communities, which fall under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) umbrella in UP.
The Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) has alleged that the cabinet expansion is being delayed by differences between the BJP’s state and central leadership over a host of issues, but the BJP denied these claims, saying the exercise will take place in line with the CM’s decision.
Sources in the UP BJP acknowledged that the CM is not willing to include the duo in his cabinet but attributed the delay to the fact that quite a few changes are likely in the expansion exercise.
“Both Rajbhar and Chauhan resigned from the cabinet, joined the Opposition and have returned to the NDA fold. The CM did not appreciate this and is especially against inducting Chauhan into the cabinet because he lost the Ghosi bypoll held in September this year,” a senior UP BJP leader told ThePrint.
“However, Rajbhar and Chauhan were inducted in the NDA because of the central leadership and will have to be inducted in the cabinet because they have the Delhi stamp and also represent two major communities holding sway in several districts,” the leader added.
The reason why expansion is being delayed, he said, is because “more faces are likely to be inducted and portfolios will also be changed when the cabinet expansion happens after pre-poll assessment”.
Another UP BJP leader said the party is likely to induct more faces from the OBC and other communities ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, especially in the backdrop of the SP’s thrust towards ‘pichhde dalit alpsankhayak’ communities (backwards, Dalits, minorities).
“The party will undergo assessment of the performance of all the ministers and is likely to add more faces in the government,” the leader said. “Some ministers may get dropped and portfolios of some may change.”
A source in the chief minister’s office said the cabinet expansion may take place only after the end of the ‘khar maas’ period, which is considered an inauspicious period by Hindus.
It falls this time from 16 December 2023 to 15 January 2024. Since the pran pratishtha of Ram Lalla’s idol at the Ram mandir in Ayodhya follows soon after on 22 January, the expansion is likely to be pushed back further, the source said.
“The cabinet expansion is likely only after the inauspicious period of khar maas ends. After that, the main focus will remain the pran pratishtha of Ram Lalla’s idol in Ram temple,” the source added.
Rajbhar Friday met CM Yogi Adityanath and asked him to speed up the decision on the cabinet expansion.
Speaking to ThePrint, he said any decision would be taken after an “agreement from both sides (central BJP leadership and UP CM)”.
Rajbhar said he would meet BJP national president J.P. Nadda on 29 December, and would only be able to give clarity on the date of the cabinet expansion after that.
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Back with NDA
Rajbhar had fought the 2022 UP assembly elections as part of the Mahagathbandhan led by the SP, seen as the BJP’s main rival in the state, after resigning from the Yogi cabinet in April 2019. He returned to the NDA in July this year.
Chauhan, who was elected from Ghosi in 2022, also served as a minister in the first Yogi government but resigned in January 2022, along with Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, two other senior BJP leaders.
The trio had joined the SP in what was seen as a setback for the ruling party.
He resigned from the UP assembly on 15 July this year and rejoined the BJP on 17 July.
Rajbhar has said in multiple interviews that the duo were assured ministerial berths in the Yogi cabinet before their induction.
In October this year, Rajbhar said the date of the cabinet expansion would be clear after 7 November, following a meeting with the BJP’s central leadership in Delhi.
Days after the results of the assembly elections to five states earlier this month, with no word on the exercise, Rajbhar said ministership was not important for him, and that “some things were fixed”.
Political analysts say while Adityanath has been averse to the induction of the turncoats, the fact that Rajbhar and Chauhan made a comeback to the NDA at the behest of the BJP’s central leadership may help the duo.
“When the cabinet was formed after the assembly polls, it was observed that Yogi’s choice of faces did not reflect in the cabinet,” said Shashikant Pandey, head of the political science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow.
“Brajesh Pathak was made deputy CM and A.K. Sharma was made energy minister. However, since the BJP usually manages such differences, these were brushed under the carpet. It is correct that Chauhan and Rajbhar are not the choices of the CM due to their shaky approach and changing parties repeatedly, but since both come from OBC communities, they are most likely to be inducted in the cabinet because they are faces of their own communities.”
The Rajbhar community holds sway in 10-15 districts, especially in the Purvanchal region, where the BJP has been facing a tough fight from the SP, said Pandey, adding that “Chauhan is also a [prominent] face of his community, which has a considerable population in several districts”.
“While a tug of war between the central and state leadership may be visible, due to the BJP’s OBC outreach and attempt to take all communities together, the two leaders are most likely to be inducted,” he said.
‘Differences between central and state BJP’
The SP has claimed there are a lot of differences between the central and state leadership of the BJP, saying that this is delaying not just the cabinet expansion but other state government decisions as well.
“The central and state leadership of the BJP have many differences and it is clear from several developments in the recent past, be it the appointment of a permanent DGP and chief secretary of the state, arrest of ‘fraudster’ Sanjay Sherpuria, who was considered close to some party leaders in Delhi, and the subsequent IT raids on a trader’s premises in Kanpur,” SP spokesperson Rajkumar Bhati told ThePrint.
“The cabinet expansion, too, has been withheld due to these differences,” Bhati said.
The BJP has denied these allegations, with UP party spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi saying the cabinet expansion will take place according to the CM’s decision.
Asked if the cabinet expansion is likely after the pran pratishtha of Ram Lalla’s idol in Ram temple, he said while the ceremony is “undoubtedly the most significant event to be held in the recent future, only the party leadership knows when the expansion will happen”.
“Media can do analysis but only the leadership knows when the decision will be taken,” he added.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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