Yogi Adityanath on Friday took oath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for the second consecutive term. The oath-taking ceremony took place at the sprawling Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow. The event was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and others.
After Yogi Adityanath, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak took oath as Deputy Chief Ministers. The Yogi 2.0 government includes 52 ministers including two Deputy CMs, 16 Cabinet Ministers, 14 Ministers with Independent Charge and 20 Ministers of State.
Some of the new faces in the Council of Ministers are ex-bureaucrat Arvind Kumar Sharma, former Kanpur Police Commissioner Asim Arun, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh and BJP national vice president Baby Rani Maurya. The allies also found representation with Union Minister Anupriya Patel’s husband Ashish Patel and NISHAD party chief Sanjay Nishad getting a Cabinet berth. Moreover, Ministers in the earlier Cabinet like Jitin Prasada, Anil Rajbhar, Surya Pratap Shahi, Suresh Khanna and Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary have been retained.
Former Deputy Speaker Nitin Agrawal who switched over from Samajwadi Party to BJP before the polls will take oath as Minister of State (Independent Charge). Danish Azad- the general secretary of UP BJP’s Minority Morcha will be the lone Muslim face in the new Yogi Adityanath-led Cabinet instead of Mohsin Raza. Overall, there are 5 women in Uttar Pradesh’s Council of Ministers- Baby Rani Maurya, Gulab Devi, Pratibha Shukla, Rajani Tiwari and Vijay Laxmi Gautam.
