By: Dheeraj Upadhyay
The Modi government on Wednesday made the biggest reshuffle in its seven years regime and almost overhauled its cabinet by infusing a mix of professionalism and experience along with strong signals to NDA and it own BJP leaders by promoting the performers while showing the door to few non- performers as well. Meanwhile, few were rewarded too, for their dedication and loyalty towards party and organisational work. This Cabinet reshuffle is significant for various reasons since out of the total 43 ministers inducted 36 are new faces and few of them are exceptionally qualified with varied backgrounds representing various castes and communities.
However, The Modi government had its special focus on the electoral states. If we look at the 7 ministers who joined PM Modi’s cabinet from UP, it is clear that the BJP leadership has tried its best to balance caste equations and emphasising on social engineering with ample representation to various strata of the state.
In the Modi cabinet, the BJP has included maximum 7 ministers from UP owing to its political weight and upcoming state assembly election in 2022. Party has given clear indication by including 3 OBCs, 3 Scheduled Castes and a Brahmin MP that it wants the other Non-Yadav OBC and non Jatav Dalit votes to remain intact with them in next state polls.
Case equations and profile of ministers
Anupriya Patel of the Apna Dal (Sonelal). Caste equation — (Kurmi by caste and area Purvanchal) important in every election in Uttar Pradesh
Three ministers — Anupriya Patel, Pankaj Chaudhary and BL Verma — comes from the other backward classes (OBC), which is estimated to be around 50 per cent of UP’s population.
Three others — Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and SP Singh Baghel — comes from the Scheduled Caste category of non Jatav Dalits comprising over 20 per cent of state’s population.
Ajay Kumar Tinu is the lone Brahmin face among the newly inducted Union ministers from central Uttar Pradesh in Lakhimpur. Brahmins constitute around 10% of Uttar Pradesh total population.
Social Engineering formula to retain UP
Yesterday’s reshuffle has been dominated by electoral and caste equations and the glimpse of the social engineering formula is clearly visible from the faces included in the Modi cabinet from UP. This recent reshuffle and caste arithmetic in Union cabinet works in the favour of Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath as he is facing election in about seven months in early 2022. Now, the Uttar Pradesh has 15 Union ministers, and the message from the centre is loud and clear that it wants to retain UP at all costs.