Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yogi Adityanath on Friday took oath for his second consecutive term as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several Union Ministers were present at the grand ceremony in Lucknow’s Ekana Stadium. Chief Ministers of the BJP ruled states and party leaders also attended the oath-taking ceremony. Yogi was sworn in by Governor Anandiben Patel in a jam-packed Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium having a crowd of more than 50,000 in attendance.
The event began with the national anthem after the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Making the oath-taking ceremony a mega-show, many colourful programmes were organised for the visitors at the stadium where Actor-politician Dinesh Lal Yadav alias Nirahua performed on the stage.
Veteran BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya, the party’s state unit chief, took oath as the Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh once again in the cabinet of Yogi Adityanath.
Maurya, a former MP from the Phulpur parliamentary constituency of Allahabad district constituency, had served as the Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in the Yogi cabinet from 2017 to 2022. BJP chose to retain Maurya despite his 2022 assembly poll defeat from the Sirathu constituency in the Kaushambi district, which is also his birthplace.
Brajesh Pathak is the other Deputy CM who was sworn in today. He replaced Dinesh Sharma, who previously served as the Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
In the last term of the Yogi Adityanath government, Dinesh Sharma was the Deputy CM, representing the electorally crucial Brahmins in the state. Pathak had served as the Law Minister in the previous Yogi Adityanath led UP Government, and was credited to have worked for the party to consolidate the support base among the Brahmins in the run up to the Assembly elections.
A prominent Brahmin leader of the party, he won the Assembly polls from the Lucknow Cannt seat in the 2022 Assembly polls.
The Yogi Adityanath Cabinet 2.0 made space for fresh faces by dropping 24 ministers from the first term of the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh.
The Ministers who failed to find places in the second term of the BJP government in the state included Dinesh Sharma, Satish Mahana, Ashutosh Tandon, Shrikant Sharma, Siddharth Nath Singh, and others. As many as 52 ministers, including Maurya and Pathak, were sworn in on Friday.
Among those who have not been made ministers are Mohsin Raza, Jai Prakash Nishad, Ram Naresh Agnihotri, Ashok Kataria, Jai Prakash Nishad, and Ramapati Shastri.
Neelkanth Tiwari from Varanasi, who was Minister of State with independent charge last time, is also missing from the list of ministers.
Neelkanth held departments like charitable work and tourism. PM Modi’s dream project Kashi Vishwanath corridor was built under his supervision. Vishwanath Temple corridor comes in the southern Varanasi city from where Neelkanth Tiwari is the MLA.
On the other hand, the BJP MLA from Mathura as well as Energy Minister in the first term, Shrikant Sharma, also did not find a place in the Yogi Cabinet. Sharma had defeated Congress’ Pradeep Mathur by a massive margin of 1,09,803 votes in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2022.
In addition, Satish Mahana who previously served as Infrastructure and Industrial Development minister in Uttar Pradesh has also been dropped from the new Cabinet in the state.
Meanwhile, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav took a jibe at Yogi Adityanath government for conducting its oath-taking ceremony at a stadium “which was built by the SP government”.
“I congratulate the new government for taking oath at a stadium which was built by the SP government. Oath should not only be taken to form the government but also to truly serve the people,” he tweeted.