BJP intent on grooming homegrown leadership
This isn’t the first occasion when the BJP indicated its desire to create its own leadership among various castes
LUCKNOW: The expansion of the Yogi Adityanath government on Sunday reflected the BJP’s focus on creating its own homegrown leadership among the marginalised castes such as the most backward of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Dalits.
The BJP, despite sealing a prepoll pact with Nishad party and making its leader Sanjay Nishad an MLC, preferred to appoint its own leader Sangeeta Balwant Bind, a 41-year-old woman politician from riverine community, as a minister of state. She is a postgraduate lawmaker from Ghazipur in eastern UP.
“I was never hankering after ministership. I will raise the voice of the marginalised classes in the Upper House and I thank the BJP for nominating me,” said Sanjay Nishad in his first reaction after the swearing-in of the seven ministers in UP.
This isn’t the first occasion when the BJP indicated its desire to create its own homegrown leaders among various castes, despite the party sealing alliances ahead of the 2022 UP polls with two OBC-based smaller parties, and indicating the desire to ink pre-poll pacts with more. Its current pre-poll allies include Apna Dal, largely considered to be a party of Kurmis (OBCs) and the Nishad party, which wields influence among community of boatmen and fishermen.
In July, while appointing Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel as a minister of state in the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, the BJP also appointed its own Lok Sabha MP from Maharajganj Pankaj Choudhary, who too is an OBC (Kurmi), as Union minister.
Apart from preferring its own leader in the UP ministry, the BJP also appointed its lawmaker from Baheri, Bareilly, Chhattrapal Gangwar, an Kurmi (OBC). While this was also seen as an attempt to politically balance the exit of party veteran and Bareilly MP Santosh Gangwar, from union government, the BJP leaders said the basic idea is to ensure that the party develops its own leadership among castes where it has no or marginal representation.
UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, too, belongs to the Kurmi subcaste. In 2019, after its ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar, an OBC belonging to Rajbhar subcaste which wields significant influence in several east UP assembly segments, fell out with the BJP, the ruling party promptly promoted Anil Rajbhar, making him a cabinet minister of the backward classes welfare department which Om Prakash handled prior to his exit.
Regional balance
After Sunday’s expansion, the strength of the Yogi ministry is now 60. These ministers now represent 41 of the 75 districts and offer a diverse caste bouquet.
Lucknow, the state capital and Lok Sabha constituency of defence minister Rajnath Singh now has the maximum six ministers.
They include deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, urban development minister Ashutosh Tandon (Gopal), Mahendra Singh, Brijesh Pathak, Swati Singh and Mohsin Raza. While Dinesh Sharma, Mahendra Singh and Mohsin Raza are MLCs, the remaining are lawmakers from Lucknow assembly segments.
Prayagraj accounts for three ministers – deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya (MLC), Sidharth Nath Singh and Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandi’. Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too has three ministers – Anil Rajbhar, Neelkanth Tiwari and Ravindra Jaiswal. Sidharthnagar has two ministers — Satish Dwivedi and Jai Pratap Singh.
After Jitin Prasada’s appointment as cabinet minister, Shahjahanpur now has two ministers – the other being party veteran Suresh Khanna.
Prasada met Khanna over breakfast at the latter’s Kalidas Marg residence on Monday. Prasada too has reportedly been allotted a bungalow on Kalidas Marg by the estate department. Fatehpur has Jai Kumar Jacky (Apna Dal) and Ranvendra Pratap Singh as ministers while Mathura too has two ministers – Chaudhary Laxmi Narain and Srikant Sharma. Kanpur too has two ministers – Satish Mahana and Neelima Katiyar.
The other districts that have representation in the Yogi ministry include Gorakhpur, Gonda, Kushinagar, Lalitpur, Chitrakoot, Jaunpur, Ballia, Pratapgarh, Bahraich, Mirzapur, Mau, Amethi, Balrampur, Moradabad, Bijnor, Agra, Meerut, Aligarh, Auraiya, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, Mainpuri, Sambhal, Rampur, Badaun, Saharanpur, Sonbhadra and Ghazipur.
Caste composition
The Yogi council of ministers now has 24 cabinet ministers, nine ministers of state (independent charge) and 27 ministers of state. Of these, there are 27 upper castes, 23 OBCs, 8 scheduled castes, one scheduled tribe and one Muslim.