The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh will see a host of new and young faces this time. After the party's bumper win in the polls, hectic parleys are underway in Delhi to finalise the names to be included in the Cabinet. Yogi Adityanath on Sunday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah and BJP's national president JP Nadda.
Sources told India TV that the party leadership is likely to change as many as one and half a dozen ministers. The frontrunners for ministerial berths in the new cabinet are Aparna Yadav, Pankaj Singh, Shalabh Mani Tripathi, Aseem Arun, Rajeshwar Singh and Dayashankar Singh.
Aparna Yadav, the daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party just ahead of the Assembly polls. She didn't contest the polls. She will likely be one of the party's candidates for the upcoming elections to the Legislative Council.
Pankaj Singh (43), the party's MLA from Noida, defeated SP's Sunil Choudhary by a huge margin of 1,81,513 votes. Shalabh Mani Tripathi, who served as the media advisor to Adityanath in the first term, won elections from the Deoria seat by a margin of 40,655. Asim Arun, an IPS officer who applied for a voluntary retirement scheme ahead of the polls, won polls on a BJP ticket from Kannauj. He defeated SP's Anil Kumar Doharey by a margin of 6,090 votes.
Shrikant Sharma, Sidharth Nath Singh, Brijesh Pathak are among others who will be retained, sources said.
Meanwhile, the party has decided that the Ministers who have lost elections will not be sent to the Legislative Council. As many as 11 Ministers lost polls and it is now evident that they will not join the government in any capacity. The party is discussing giving chances to new leaders. But is it also being said that Keshav Prasad Maurya, whom the party projects as its OBC face, could get a chance. Maurya, who served as the deputy CM, lost the election to SP's Pallavi Patel from stronghold Sirathu.
The party's core group is slated to meet in Lucknow today evening to discuss the names for the MLC election. The nomination is set to begin from March 15.
The BJP under the leadership of Yogi Adityanath retained power in Uttar Pradesh, winning 255 of the 403 Assembly seats.
READ MORE: Adityanath meets PM Modi in Delhi days after BJP's resounding victory in UP
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