Meet new faces in Yogi Cabinet: Purvanchal proponent, non-Yadav OBC leader, Jayant Chaudhary aide, lawyer

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday expanded his Council of Ministers, inducting four new ministers including two from allies – the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) – ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Besides accommodating the BJP’s allies, Adityanath has sought to balance the caste and regional equations in picking the new ministers – SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar, RLD MLA Anil Kumar, BJP MLC Dara Singh Chauhan, and BJP legislator Sunil Kumar Sharma.

Two of the four new ministers, Rajbhar and Chauhan, are non-Yadav OBC leaders from eastern UP, while the other two – Dalit leader Kumar and Brahmin face Sharma – are from West UP.

With Tuesday’s rejig, all constituents of the NDA have now found a place in the Yogi ministry as representatives from the BJP’s other allies, the Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party, had already been inducted.

Om Prakash Rajbhar

The 66-year-old SBSP chief, Om Prakash Rajbhar, is the sitting MLA from Zahoorabad and has had an on and off relationship with the BJP. His party’s six MLAs had voted in favour of the BJP candidates in the recent Rajya Sabha elections.

Despite his controversial comments, his induction is being seen as the BJP’s attempts to consolidate Rajbhar votes, which are in significant numbers in several Lok Sabha seats in East UP.

Claiming to have driven a tempo as a young man for livelihood, Rajbhar formed the SBSP in 2002 and has been since fielding candidates in UP and Bihar in various polls. His party’s first victory came in the 2017 UP Assembly polls, when his party won four of the eight seats it contested in alliance with the BJP. He was rewarded with a ministerial berth and held the Backward Class Welfare portfolio