Yogi Adityanath inducts 18 new faces in cabinet, axes five ministers

CM Yogi Adityanath expands UP cabinet: Six cabinet ministers, six ministers of state with Independent charge and 11 ministers of state take over.

Updated on: Aug 21, 2019, 13:53:39 IST

Hindustan Times, Lucknow | By Umesh Raghuvanshi

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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday expanded his 29-month-old cabinet inducting 23 ministers -- six cabinet, six ministers of state with Independent charge and 11 ministers of state.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Governor Anandiben Patel among others during the Cabinet expansion at Raj Bhavan in Lucknow on Wednesday. (ANI photo)

The reshuffle takes the strength of the ministry to 56 from earlier 43. The state can have up to 60 ministers.

The ministers were administered the oath of office by Governor Anandiben Patel at Gandhi auditorium of Raj Bhavan in Lucknow amid intermittent slogans of ‘har har Mahadev’ and ‘Bharat mata ki jai’.

Those administered oath include 18 new faces. Four ministers of state (independent charge) have been elevated to cabinet rank while a minister of state has been rewarded with minister of state (independent charge) rank.

Wednesday’s reshuffle preceded resignation by five ministers. On Tuesday night resignations of five ministers had been accepted. These included UP BJP chief Swatantradev Singh, minister for finance Rajesh Agarwal.

The expansion was reportedly slotted for Monday but was put off. Here’s the list of changes carried out today. Here’s the full list:

The Cabinet ministers are

*Dr Mahendra Singh

*Suresh Rana

*Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary

*Anil Rajbhar

*Ram Naresh Agnihotri

*Mrs Kamla Rani Varun

Four of them have been elevated from minister of state (independent charge) rank. Mahendra Singh was a minister of state.

The ministers of state (independent charge):

*Neelkanth Tiwari

*Kapil Dev Agarwal

*Satish Dwivedi

*Ashok Kataria

*Sriram Chauhan

*Ravindra Jaiswal

The ministers of state:

*Anil Sharma

*Mahesh Gupta

*Anand Swaroop Sharma

*Vijay Kashyap

*Giraj Singh Dharmesh

*Lakhan Singh Rajput

*Neelima Katiyar

*Udaibhan Singh

*Chandrika Prasad Upadhyay

*Rameshwar Singh Patel

*Ajit Singh Pal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Umesh Raghuvanshi
Umesh Raghuvanshi is an award-winning journalist with nearly four decades of demonstrated experience in the profession. He is the author of Ayodhya: The Gods Are Liberated. He is skilled in storytelling and newswriting, and writes on politics, governance, legislature, finance, environment, and social issues. He is based in Lucknow, is well-travelled, and has covered several national and international events, as well as all assembly and parliament elections in Uttar Pradesh since 1984. He has been a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and a Metcalf Fellow at the Metcalf Institute of Marine and Environmental Reporting, University of Rhode Island, USA. He is a science graduate from DBS College, Dehradun, and holds an MA in Political Science from DAV (PG) College, Dehradun. He won the KC Kulish International Merit Award for excellence in journalism (2015) and received it in New Delhi in 2017. He also won a competition organised by the United Nations Environment Programme DTIE OzonAction Programme in 2009 that assessed coverage of the interlinkages between ozone and climate change. He was awarded in Beijing, China, in 2010. He started his career with a Dehradun-based English daily in the early 1980s and later worked with The Pioneer too.Read More