Date:02/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/02/stories/2008050253201300.htm

National

Two Ministers inducted in Uttar Pradesh, two elevated

Atiq Khan

LUCKNOW: Uttar Chief Minister Mayawati inducted two Ministers and elevated two Ministers of State (with independent charge) to the rank of Cabinet Ministers in a minor Cabinet expansion on Thursday. They were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor T.V. Rajeswar at a ceremony held in the Raj Bhavan.

Rajpal Tyagi and Subhash Pandey, MLA from Machhlishahr in Jaunpur district, took the oath as Cabinet Ministers. Their induction brought the strength of the Ministry to 54 with 41 Ministers of Cabinet rank and the rest being Ministers of State.

Minister of State for Forest and Wildlife (independent charge) Fateh Bahadur Singh and Minister of State for Elections (independent charge) Ramhet Bharti were elevated to the rank of Cabinet Ministers.

Among the new Ministers, Mr. Tyagi won the by-election from Muradnagar constituency in Ghaziabad district on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket recently. He was in the BSP but deserted the party in 2003 when Mulayam Singh became the Chief Minister and went on to serve as the Rural Development Minister.

In the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Mr. Tyagi won from Muradnagar as an Independent. When Ms. Mayawati became the Chief Minister again in 2007, he returned to the BSP fold and quit his Assembly seat. Mr. Tyagi is a Jat.

Surprise package

The surprise package, however, was Mr. Pandey, a Brahmin, whose induction as a Cabinet Minister was in line with the Chief Minister’s social engineering formula. Since the Chief Minister has already announced that one of her Cabinet colleagues, Kamla Kant Gautam, will contest next year’s Lok Sabha election from Machhlishahr (represented by Uma Kant Yadav of the BSP, who has been sacked by Ms. Mayawati ), Mr. Pandey will in effect replace Mr. Gautam in the Cabinet.

Also, by making him a Minister, Ms. Mayawati might have given him the added responsibility of ensuring the success of the BSP in Machhlishahr in the Lok Sabha polls.

Mr. Fateh Bahadur Singh’s elevation as a Cabinet Minister comes in the wake of him being made one of the two in-charges of Purvanchal zone (eastern Uttar Pradesh), who have been entrusted with the task of wooing the Thakurs or Kshatriyas of the region. The son of the former Chief Minister, Vir Bahadur Singh, he was earlier in the Bharatiya Janata Party before joining the BSP last year.