LUCKNOW: Post Lok Sabha poll results, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath has his task cut out — an organisational overhaul and a cabinet reshuffle. Sources said the reshuffles will be necessitated by the outcome of the elections as four of Yogi’s ministers — women welfare minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi, khadi, small scale and handloom minister Satyadev Pachauri, animal husbandry minister SP Singh Baghel and cooperative minister Mukut Bihari Verma — are in the fray.
While Joshi is contesting from Allahabad, Pachauri is trying his luck from Kanpur, Baghel from Agra and Verma from Ambedkarnagar. If all these four candidates make it to the lower house of Parliament, then the CM will have to look for replacements.
Moreover, there is another vacancy following the dismissal of OP Rajbhar, minister for backward class development, which is temporarily being handled by Anil Rajbhar, a junior minister.
In fact, CM Yogi had been postponing the reshuffle for some time now. Insiders say, Yogi is not satisfied with the performance of some of his cabinet colleagues and has expressed his displeasure at cabinet meetings. On the other hand, with 2022 Assembly polls not far away, the party will try to strike a caste balance.
In the Lok Sabha elections, a number of BJP legislators have played an important role in re-working the caste calculus to the party’s advantage to enable the organisation to put up some fight against the formidable SP-BSP-RLD gathbandhan. Some of them are likely to be rewarded.
The onus on the CM is to give representation to Dalit sub-castes, including Dhobi, Koeri and Valmikis, who are now considered a prominent chunk of BJP’s social engineering. Among the backwards, representation to a Gujjar in the cabinet is also due, while some of the ministers are to be promoted to cabinet rank.
