Yogi Adityanath to meet PM Modi, senior leadership regarding government formation

Vibha Sharma

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 12

Setting in motion the process of government formation in four states it returned to power, the BJP leadership is expected to take major decisions regarding the council of ministers in key state Uttar Pradesh and the next chief minister of Uttarakhand on Sunday

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will be here for a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the central leadership, including party chief JP Nadda, sources say. Uttarakhand observers are also likely to give their feedback regarding legislators’ views on the same evening.

Though the BJP created history in the hill state, retaining power and winning 47 seats in the 70-member assembly, the chief minister under which it contested, Pushkar Singh Dhami, lost his Khatima seat, putting the leadership in a rather piquant situation.

Amid speculations whether the central leadership will back Dhami, sources say many BJP MLAs have offered to vacate seats to put him back at the helm of affairs. The consensus appears in favour of Dhami though several other names are also doing the rounds for the top job in Uttarakhand, the sources add.

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh the leadership has to take a decision on the fate of Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya who lost Sirathu Assembly constituency to Pallavi Patel, the elder sister of NDA ally and Apna Dal (S) chief Anupriya Patel. Maurya is a key non-Yadav OBC face of BJP and ranked among important leaders from the state that sends 80 MPs and where the BJP hopes to make maximum gains in the 2024 Lok Sabha.

Though as an MLC, he still has a couple of years left from his term. Like Adityanath, Maurya had contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. He resigned from his Phulpur constituency after being appointed the Deputy CM of UP.

Apart from Maurya, 10 sitting ministers also lost their seats in the just-concluded elections to the Samajwadi Party-led coalition. Earlier, ministers like Swami Prasad Maurya, Dharam Singh Saini and Dara Singh Chauhan switched sides to the SP, leaving vacancies and scope for others. In other words, though the BJP decimated the Congress and the BSP, several of its big names lost to the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP.

The ministers who lost are Suresh Kumar Rana from Thana Bhawan in Shamli, Rajendra Pratap Singh (Moti Singh) from Patti in Pratapgarh, Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa in Siddharthnagar district, Upendra Tewari from Phephna, Anand Swaroop Shukla from Bariya in Ballia district, Ranvendra Singh alias Dhunni Singh from Hussain Ganj in Fatehpur district, Chandrika Prasad Tewari from Chitrakoot, Chhatrapal Singh Gangwar from Baheri in Bareilly district, Sangeeta Balwant from Ghazipur and Lakhan Singh Rajpoot in Dibiyapur.

Meanwhile Adityanath yesterday tendered his resignation to Governor Anandiben Patel after chairing the last meeting of the outgoing Cabinet, expressing gratitude to the people for voting the BJP back to power.

So far as Goa is concerned, the BJP is technically one short of a simple majority. However, two MLAs of MGP, the alliance partner of TMC, and Independents have extended support, according to outgoing CM Pramod Sawant