Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday expanded his 29-month-old cabinet inducting 23 ministers -- six cabinet, six ministers of state with Independent charge and 11 ministers of state.
The reshuffle takes the strength of the ministry to 56 from earlier 43. The state can have up to 60 ministers.
The ministers were administered the oath of office by Governor Anandiben Patel at Gandhi auditorium of Raj Bhavan in Lucknow amid intermittent slogans of ‘har har Mahadev’ and ‘Bharat mata ki jai’.
Those administered oath include 18 new faces. Four ministers of state (independent charge) have been elevated to cabinet rank while a minister of state has been rewarded with minister of state (independent charge) rank.
Wednesday’s reshuffle preceded resignation by five ministers. On Tuesday night resignations of five ministers had been accepted. These included UP BJP chief Swatantradev Singh, minister for finance Rajesh Agarwal.
The expansion was reportedly slotted for Monday but was put off. Here’s the list of changes carried out today. Here’s the full list:
The Cabinet ministers are
*Dr Mahendra Singh
*Suresh Rana
*Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary
*Anil Rajbhar
*Ram Naresh Agnihotri
*Mrs Kamla Rani Varun
Four of them have been elevated from minister of state (independent charge) rank. Mahendra Singh was a minister of state.
The ministers of state (independent charge):
*Neelkanth Tiwari
*Kapil Dev Agarwal
*Satish Dwivedi
*Ashok Kataria
*Sriram Chauhan
*Ravindra Jaiswal
The ministers of state:
*Anil Sharma
*Mahesh Gupta
*Anand Swaroop Sharma
*Vijay Kashyap
*Giraj Singh Dharmesh
*Lakhan Singh Rajput
*Neelima Katiyar
*Udaibhan Singh
*Chandrika Prasad Upadhyay
*Rameshwar Singh Patel
*Ajit Singh Pal