The new ministers are Chandauli MP Mahendra Pandey (Brahmin), Shahjahanpur MP Krishna Raj (Dalit) and Apna Dal MP from Mirzapur Anupriya Patel (Kurmi-OBC). Interestingly, all of them are first time MPs.
UP now has more ministers at the Centre (15) than ever before. With the induction of three fresh faces from UP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has demonstrated the huge importance UP carries in his political and electoral plans. The move is also seen as an attempt to balance caste equations in the run-up to the 2017 UP assembly polls.
The new ministers are Chandauli MP Mahendra Pandey (Brahmin), Shahjahanpur MP Krishna Raj (Dalit) and Apna Dal MP from Mirzapur Anupriya Patel (Kurmi-OBC). Interestingly, all of them are first time MPs.
The big tally from UP is Modi's way of honouring the huge victory that the BJP got in UP in 2014 winning 73 of the total 80 seats, which included two of its ally Apna Dal.
The union council of ministers until Monday had 12 ministers from UP besides the prime minister himself: five cabinet ministers, three ministers of state (independent charge) and four ministers of state.
Modi has virtually made his UP plans quite clear at the June 13 Parivartan Rally in Allahabad when he had pointed out the union ministers seated on the dais and said, "The stage shows the dominance of UP in the Central government."
As per caste equations, Krishna Raj, a Pasi Scheduled Case, has been inducted to target the Dalit vote bank of the Bahujan Samaj Party which is going through a big crisis due to the desertion by two senior leaders RK Chaudhary (Dalit) and Swami Prasad Maurya (OBC).
A post graduate business woman and MP from the reserved constituency of Shahjahanpur, Krishna Raj had been MLA from the reserved seat of Mohammadi in 1996 and 2007. She had lost the assembly election in 2012 from Kasta. She had also lost Lok Sabha elections from Shahjahanpur in 2009.
Mirzapur MP Anupriya Patel is daughter of Kurmi leader late Sone Lal Patel. She contested her first assembly election from Rohaniya in Varanasi in 2012 to win as an Apna Dal candidate, the party founded by her father. She catapulted the little known party to the national spotlight when she got an alliance with the BJP on two seats of Mirzapur and Pratapgarh and won both the seats with the help of Modi wave.
A graduate from Lady Sri Ram College of Delhi University, Anupriya had vacated the Rohaniya assembly seat after winning the Lok Sabha election. Her mother Krishna Patel had lost by-elections from Rohaniya in 2014.
OBC dominated Rohaniya falls in Modi's Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi where Shah addressed a Jan Swabhiman Rally on July 2, on the birth anniversary of Sone Lal Patel. Anupriya had organised that rally and the BJP had then announced that both parties would continue their alliance in the 2017 assembly polls too.
Anupriya's induction can be seen as an attempt to balance the OBC caste equation after the Samajwadi Party recently took back senior leader and ex-union minister Beni Prasad Verma (a Kurmi) and sent him to Rajya Sabha.
BJP MP from Chandauli Mahendra Nath Pandey is considered close to both Shah and Modi and his induction is aimed at reviving support of Brahmins voters who drifted towards the BSP in 2007 and 2012 assembly polls.
Pandey is the MP from Chandauli, but he is chairperson of the vigilance and monitoring committee of development projects for Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency too.
Pandey had been BJP MLA from Saidpur in 1991 and 1996 and he was minister in governments led by Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh. With an ABVP background, Pandey had been BJP's state general secretary in the past.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
 "Mahendra Nath Pandey")
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}