Yogi 2.0: New Caste Equations

Elections, and the politics surrounding them, are not a finite event. They don’t just come once in five years. Every day is a step towards the next one...even the first day. When Yogi Adityanath took oath for his second term on March 25, in a grand ceremony at Ekana stadium in Lucknow, the way he rearranged his team offered a classic example of that. Caste equations and the imperatives of regional balance, keeping in mind the Lok Sabha election in 2024, were the decisive factors in the ministerial choices—some of which had the stamp of New Delhi.

- Prashant Srivastava

More than half of the new team was on stage to take oath along with Yogi, but there were a few surprises—22 ministers from his previous government were dropped, and 31 new faces added to his cabinet of 52. Surprises continued in how he parcelled out the responsibilities too. The key public works department (PWD) was taken away from deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and given to Jitin Prasada, a Congress import. Maurya has been compensated with rural development, a department called ‘national integration’ and some others. Fellow deputy CM Brajesh Pathak has been allocated three departments that are quite key these days—health, family welfare and child welfare. Ex-IAS officer A.K. Sharma has got urban development and power, two key departments.

The 22 ministers dropped include heavyweights like former deputy CM Dinesh Sharma, Siddharth Nath Singh and Srikant Sharma. The last was replaced by Pathak—another Brahmin face, and one seen as quite critical in the new scheme of things. Pathak not only won the assembly election from Lucknow Cantt, he’s seen to have brought around his somewhat estranged community. No wonder he has been made a deputy CM.

Senior figures from the previous team, like Ashutosh Tandon, Satish Mahana and Mahendra Singh, do not find a place. The word is that non-performance went along with the fact that party functionaries and the RSS sent a ‘not good’ feedback on them. A senior BJP leader said on condition of anonymity, “Perform or perish is a clear message coming out from this selection. That a heavyweight like Keshav Maurya lost PWD is seen to be the most telling illustration of that.”