UP ministers to attend swearing-in of mayors today

LUCKNOW: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and ministers in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government will participate in the swearing-in ceremony of 14 mayors who have won on the party ticket in the recently concluded civic elections in the state. The swearing-in functions will be held across the state on Tuesday.

Party leaders will also be present for the oath-taking by BJP candidates who have won elections to semi-urban bodies —the nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats.

Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, along with union minister Santosh Gangwar, will be present for the swearing in ceremony of Bareilly mayor Umesh Gautam, the chancellor of a private university.

Maurya will also attend the swearing-in ceremony of Allahabad mayor Abhilasha Gupta, wife of UP minister Nand Gopal ‘Nandi’ whose cabinet colleague Rita Bahuguna Joshi will also be present. The other deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, along with ministers Suresh Khanna, Ashutosh Tandon ‘Gopal’ and Rajesh Agarwal, will attend the swearing in ceremony of Lucknow mayor and BJP veteran Sanyukta Bhatia.

Sharma will attend the swearing-in functions of mayors in Moradabad and Agra as well. Vinod Agarwal won in Moradabad and Navin Jain emerged victorious in Agra.

Another minister Neelkanth Tiwari will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Varanasi mayor Mridula Jaiswal. Veteran party leader Ramapati Ram Tripathi will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Ghaziabad mayor Asha Sharma. Union minister of state for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla will attend the ceremony in Gorakhpur. Transport minister Swatantra Dev Singh will be present at the oath-taking by Ayodhya’s first mayor Rishikesh Upadhyay. Ayodhya was elevated to the status of a municipal corporation by the Yogi Adityanath government.

Rural engineering service minister Rajendra Pratap Singh will be present in Jhansi where party candidate Ram Tirth Singhal won the election for mayor. Ministers Surya Pratap Shahi, Satish Mahana and Satyadev Pachauri will be in Kanpur where the party’s Pramila Pandey won the mayoral election.

Energy minister Shrikant Sharma will be in Mathura, a first time municipal corporation, from where Mukesh Arya won the elections. Animal husbandry minister SP Baghel will witness the swearing-in ceremony of Nutan Rathore as the mayor of Ferozabad, another first time municipal corporation.

In Saharanpur, minister of state for panchayatiraj Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary will attend the swearing-in of Sanjeev Walia as the mayor. State BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey will be present in Chandauli for the swearing-in of the BJP candidate who won the Chandauli Nagar Palika Parishad chief’s post.

Former union minister Kalraj Mishra will be in Deoria while UP BJP general secretary Vijay Pathak will be in Ambedkarnagar. Ministers Suresh Rana and Anupama Jaiswal will be in Sultanpur and Bhinga Nagar Palika Parishad of Shravasti.

SEVERAL OTHER BJP MINISTERS WILL ATTEND THE SWEARINGIN FUNCTIONS OF PARTY MEMBERS WHO HAVE WON NAGAR PALIKA PARISHAD AND NAGAR PANCHAYAT POSTS.