UP share in Union Council of Ministers drops to 9, BJP tries to strike caste balance

However, considering the shift of the OBC and Dalit votes to the SP-Congress alliance of the Opposition INDIA bloc in the elections, and the resentment faced by the party from a section of Thakur leaders, the BJP has tried to strike a caste balance in the ministerial allocation.

Out of the nine ministers, three are OBC leaders — Lodhi leader BL Verma from Badaun, Kurmi leaders Pankaj Chaudhary (Maharajganj) and Anupriya Patel (Mirzapur). Two are Dalit leaders — SP Singh Baghel (Agra), and Kamlesh Paswan (Bansgaon). Jitin Prasada, a minister in the UP government, who won from Pilibhit, is the sole Brahmin face from UP. There are two Thakur leaders – veteran party leader Rajnath Singh (Lucknow) and a surprise debut by Kirti Vardhan Singh alias Raja Bhaiya from Gonda. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary is a Jat leader.

The induction of Raja Bhaiya is seen as an attempt by the BJP to strike a balance of power in Gonda vis-a-vis Brij Bhushan Saran Singh’s influence in the region. Brij Bhushan, who is facing sexual harassment charges from women wrestlers, did not contest this time. Instead, his son, Karan Bhushan Singh, contested from Gonda and won.

In terms of Cabinet posts, Rajnath Singh is the only Cabinet minister from UP this time.

In the outgoing government, there were three Cabinet-rank ministers from UP – Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, and Mahendra Nath Pandey. This time there is one MoS (Independent charge) — Jayant Chaudhary. The rest seven are Ministers of State. Of the 13 ministers from the previous government, 11 had contested the elections, but only four could win. All the four – Rajnath, Anupriya, Baghel and DL Verma – have been retained.

Rajnath Singh, 72, Cabinet Minister

A stalwart leader of the BJP, Rajnath Singh was the second leader to take oath after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday. Singh, who held important portfolios – Home and Defence – in the two terms of the Modi government — has been elected to Lok Sabha for the fourth time. He was elected MP from Ghaziabad in 2009, and since 2014, he has been representing Lucknow in Parliament. He was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh from 2000 to 2002. He had also served as Cabinet minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He was BJP national president when BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

Jayant Chaudhary, 45, MoS (Independent Charge)

A Jat leader from west UP, Jayant is the grandson of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh and son of former Union Minister Ajit Singh. Making his debut in the Union Cabinet, he has been made Minister of State (Independent Charge).

Jayant had taken charge of his party Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), after the death of his father, Ajit Singh, in 2021.

The RLD, which had won nine seats in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in alliance with Samajwadi Party, had been part of the Opposition INDIA bloc till February this year. However, he jumped ship and joined the BJP-led NDA just before the elections after the Union government bestowed Bharat Ratna on Chaudhary Charan Singh. While Jayant did not contest, his party candidates — Rajkumar Sangwan and Chandan Chauhan – contested from two seats — Baghpat and Bijnore, respectively – and won.

The victory of the party in the two seats is being seen as the party’s revival after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots as it had failed to win a single seat in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Jitin Prasada, 50, MoS

A Cabinet minister in Yogi Adityanath’s government, Prasada was one of the youngest ministers in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. A decade later, he has made a comeback in the Union Cabinet as the BJP’s Brahmin face from UP.

Prasada, who has been a two-term MP, Union minister, and a sitting minister in the UP government, defeated Bhagwat Saran Gangwar, a former five-time MLA of the Samajwadi Party (SP), in a tough battle in this year’s Sabha elections from Pilibhit, where Maneka Gandhi or Varun Gandhi used to contest.

Once considered close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Prasada started his political career in the same year as Rahul in 2004. He has previously represented the Shahjahanpur and Dhaurara constituencies of Uttar Pradesh.

While he became a Member of Parliament for the first time at the age of 31, Prasada was one of the youngest ministers in the UPA government in 2008. Educated at Delhi’s Shri Ram College of Commerce, and International Management Institute, Prasada represented significant ministries like steel and petroleum during the UPA I and UPA II governments.

He formed the Brahmin Chetna Parishad and travelled across UP to raise his voice against alleged atrocities against Brahmins during the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government in 2020, and has been vocal about issues facing the community.

He parted ways with the Congress in 2021 to join BJP. He was made a Cabinet minister in the UP government and held the PWD portfolio. When the BJP government returned to power in UP again in 2022, Prasada retained his ministerial post and continued as a Member of Legislative Council. In a first, PM Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Pilibhit in support of Prasada, who won by a margin of more than 1.6 lakh votes.

Pankaj Chaudhary, 50, MoS

The seven-term MP from Maharajganj, Chaudhary was Minister of State (Finance) in the previous government. He belongs to the OBC Kurmi community, which has a significant presence in areas of central and eastern UP. Hailing from Gorakhpur district, Chaudhary started his political career in the late 80s as a corporator in the Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation. He went on to become the deputy Mayor of Gorakhpur. He made his Lok Sabha debut in 1991 and became a Union minister in the Modi government in 2021 before the 2022 UP Assembly elections. In this election, he had a close fight with Congress MLA Virendra Chaudhary, and won by a slender margin of about 35,000 votes.

Anupriya Patel, 43, MoS

Anupriya, who had to suddenly take charge of her party, Apna Dal (S) following the death of her father and popular Kurmi Sone Lal Patel, has been a steady ally of the BJP since 2014 when Narendra Modi led the BJP to its first victory at the Centre.

Now, a three-term MP from Mirzapur, Anupriya has been a minister (MoS) in both the previous governments of PM Modi. She served as MoS (Health and Family Welfare) in the first term — from 2016 to 2019. In the second term of the Modi government, she was inducted into the Council of Ministers before the 2022 UP polls and was made MoS (Commerce and Industry).

An MBA graduate, Anupriya was a teacher. In 2012, she was first elected as an MLA from Rohaniya constituency in Varanasi. Her husband, Ashish Patel, is a minister in the UP government. Among the NDA alliance partners in UP, Apna Dal (S) has the most MLAs, 13.
In Varanasi as well as surrounding areas, her party has a significant say among the Patel community. Anupriya’s father Sone Lal Patel was among the founding members of the BSP in 1984 and launched his own party – Apna Dal — in 1995. He died in 2009. In 2016, the Apna Dal broke away into two factions following disputes between Anupriya and her mother Krishna Patel who now heads the Apna Dal (Kameravadi). The two Apna Dal factions enjoy the support of Kurmis as well as non-Yadav OBC communities.

BL Verma, 62, MoS

Considered an organisational leader within the BJP, Verma has served various posts within the party units for decades — from BJP Yuva Morcha to the UP unit and National OBC Morcha.

Verma belongs to the OBC Lodhi community and was once considered close to former chief minister Kalyan Singh. Hailing from Badaun district in west UP, Verma has a considerable influence in his community, which has a significant presence in areas like Aligarh and Etah.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2020 and continues to be in the Upper House. Ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly polls, he was made a Union minister along with six others from the state. He was MoS (Development of North Eastern Region) in the first term of the Modi government and MoS (Cooperation) in the second term. He is also national vice -president of BJP’s OBC Morcha.

SP Singh Baghel, 63

Baghel, who started his political career as a Samajwadi Party leader, is a five-term MP. While he won three times as Samajwadi Party MP from 1998 to 2009, he was elected to Rajya Sabha on a BSP ticket in 2010, when there was a BSP government in the state. Later, he joined the BJP and the party MLA from the Tundla Assembly constituency in 2017. He was made a Cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath-led government in the state. Later, he contested as the BJP’s candidate from Agra and won for the first time in 2019. He was made Minister of Law and Justice during the Cabinet expansion of 2021.

While Baghel’s caste has been a subject of controversy in the past, he is considered as the party’s Dalit face and contested from Agra (SC-reserved) Lok Sabha seat.

In this election, Bhaghel won by a huge margin of over 2.71 lakh votes.

Kirti Vardhan Singh, 58, MoS

A five-term MP, Singh also popularly known as Raja Bhaiya, is the Thakur face in the Council of Ministers from UP along with Rajnath Singh. He, like Baghel, started his political career from the Samajwadi Party and joined BJP before the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Having won the Gonda constituency with a margin of over 1.6 lakh votes in the past, this time his margin dropped to around 47,000 votes

He hails from the royal family of Mankapur. His father, Anand Singh, was a Congress MP from Gonda and an MLA.

The 58-year-old has an MSc in Geology from Lucknow University. He was also a member of the UP Legislative Assembly and served as Agriculture Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government in UP from 2012 to 2017.

Kamlesh Paswan, 47, MoS

The four-term MP from Bansgaon constituency, the induction of Paswan, from the Pasi community among Dalits, is seen as an attempt by the BJP to woo Dalits in east UP. While Paswan has been an SP MLA in the past, his younger brother, Vimlesh, is at present a two-term BJP MLA from Bangaon Assembly seat in Gorakhpur.

Having won the previous Lok Sabha election by a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes, this time, Paswan defeated Sadal Prasad of the Congress by a margin of mere 3,100 votes. The Congress is contemplating to appeal the Election Commission for a recount in Bansgaon