Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the second day of his Delhi visit on Friday. The discussion between the two leaders lasted for about one-and-a-half hours. The agenda of the discussion was the 2022 UP Assembly elections.
Top BJP sources say that, following the meeting with PM Modi, the Yogi government is going to expand soon, in which Jitin Prasada, who recently left the Congress and joined the saffron party, and Arvind Sharma, a retired Gujarat cadre civil servant believed to be close to the PM, is likely to be made ministers.
According to party sources, in view of Jitin Prasada’s influence among Brahmins, the BJP will project him as a prominent Brahmin face in Uttar Pradesh. He is likely to be made a minister in the Yogi government; later in July, he can be made MLC. Arvind Sharma will also project him as a Brahmin leader and BJP will make him a minister in the Yogi government.
PM Modi is also believed to have advised the UP CM to make new electoral alliances for social engineering in the state. After Anupriya Patel and Sanjay Nishad’s meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday, the possibility has increased that the faces of Kurmi and Mallah castes will also be given a place in the Yogi cabinet.
The BJP organisation in UP will also be reshuffled. If sources are to be believed, some ministers will be sent to the organisation, while a few from the organisation may be accommodated in the government.
Sources also say that Adityanath has been told by PM Modi to accommodate Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, and work with a “big heart”.
The meeting also focused on the lack of coordination between the BJP organisation and the Yogi government, for which the party faced a setback in the recent panchayat elections.
After his meeting PM Modi, Adityanath also met BJP national president J.P. Nadda. This meeting lasted for about two hours, with organisational changes being the main topic of discussion. In the meeting with Nadda, Yogi was told to take everyone along till the Assembly elections.