Yogi Adityanath divests some ministers of plum portfolios in reshuffle

LUCKNOW: After sending a strong message on Wednesday in reshuffling his cabinet, chief minister Yogi Adityanath again wielded authority when he distributed portfolios as he stripped some of the ministers of their plum portfolios and rewarded those who performed with additional departments.
The CM himself has 11 major departments, refusing to give the sensitive home department to anyone, and keeping revenue, housing and others.
Similarly, the two deputy chief minsters have retained all the portfolios they had. Siddharth Nath Singh has been divested of his medical and health department and handed over khadi and textile and a few other departments.
The biggest has been Suresh Khanna, who along with parliamentary affairs, has two more important departments — finance and medical education.
Finance minister Rajesh Agarwal had resigned after a protracted battle with his department principal secretary Sanjiv Mittal. Energy minister Shrikant Sharma has retained his portfolio. Sharma had drawn applauds from Lucknow to Delhi for implementing prime minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Ujwala scheme successfully. The two new entrants — Ram Naresh Agnihotri and Kamla Rani Varun — have got important portfolios of excise and technical education departments respectively.
Rajendra Pratap Singh alias Moti Singh is also among the gainers as he has been rewarded with rural development and integrated development. Suresh Rana, elevated as cabinet minister, now has sugarcane and development, departments he had as minister of state. Rana hails from western UP, which is a sugarcane rich belt, and had played a key role in clearing cane arrears of sugar mill owners to farmers. Mahendra Singh, who was sworn in as number two after Wednesday’s reshuffle, has been given the newly-created Jal Shakti department, which has the irrigation department and Namami Gange, another dream project of the prime minister. Singh, like Sharma had drawn accolades for successfully implementing the prime minister rural housing scheme and led UP as number one in the country. Chetan Chauhan has been downgraded by withdrawing the sports department from him.
Ashutosh Tandon is learnt to have volunteered for a department change from medical education to urban development, which has been agreed to. Now Tandon will head urban development and planning, a department which his father and now governor of Madhya Pradesh Lalji Tandon also held with Kalyan Singh as chief minister.
The CM is also learnt to have been unhappy with Nand Gopal Nandi and had cancelled transfers and postings, with an inquiry in his stamp and registration department. In the portfolio distribution, Nandi has been downgraded after being stripped of this department.