How the Yogi government is attempting to appease the deputy CMs and ministers and quell unrest

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh has undergone some administrative changes over the past month, including more district inspections, higher say on transfers for deputy chief ministers, weekly coordination meetings with the CM, and expanded responsibility for ministers.

According to BJP sources, the government is attempting to address perceived dissatisfaction among ministers with these steps.

The action came after Dinesh Khatik, the state’s Jal Shakti minister, resigned in July amid allegations of corruption in his office but opted to stay after meeting with Adityanath. The opposition attacked the Yogi government over Khatik’s charges after he submitted his resignation letter to senior BJP member and Union home minister Amit Shah.

Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya also caused controversy with a tweet last month. He wrote on his Twitter page, “The organisation is greater than the government.”

These events had sparked talk of a potential BJP power struggle, which prompted Adityanath and the state unit to switch to damage control mode.

However, senior party figures attempted to downplay the significance of the recent “changes” in governance in UP.

Rakesh Tripathi, a spokesman for the UP BJP, told ThePrint that coordination meetings had previously been held and that only minor adjustments had been made to the group of ministers’ duties, which now include fieldwork and reporting to the chief executive.

This is to make sure that just because someone is a minister, it doesn’t imply that they would lose connection with the people on the ground, continued Tripathi.

On the other hand, deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak credited some of the recent initiatives — like the weekly coordination meeting — to the Yogi government’s ‘zero tolerance’ for crime and corruption, which he said will be increased at every level.

Questions were raised about the Adityanath administration in July after Pathak wrote to Amit Mohan Prasad, who was then the assistant chief secretary for medicine and health, about apparent inconsistencies in the application of the transfer policy. In a significant bureaucratic reorganisation earlier this month, Prasad was transferred.

When asked whether the most recent administrative changes demonstrated the increasing importance of deputy CMs in governance, Pathak responded, “There is nothing like that. We are all working together in the government…we are working for the benefit of the public. We regularly hold the (coordination) meeting and hold discussions.”

The coordination meetings, according to sources in the chief minister’s office (CMO), are the responsibility of the party, not the government.

Shift in Yogi 2.0’s initial stand
The chief minister of the Yogi government in Uttar Pradesh released a list of dos and don’ts for his ministers not long after the Yogi government won a resounding victory in this year’s assembly elections.

These included rules for the hiring of personal staff, a daily work schedule for ministers, presentations made by ministers in cabinet meetings rather than by officers, and lodging in government guest homes rather than hotels while on official visits to districts.

The ministers were also required to spend two days a week in their divisions, which are groups of three to six districts, to inspect development efforts and ensure that government programmes are being carried out properly. State ministers were instructed to go on these field trips with their cabinet mates.

Each of Adityanath’s cabinet mates was given responsibility for one division because the state has 18 divisions and 18 cabinet ministers.

Divisions were assigned in a different way in May.

However, doubts have been raised about the Adityanath administration in response to Khatik’s resignation letter, in which he also stated that “he was not assigned any authority in the department,” and Pathak’s letter to Prasad regarding the apparent anomalies in transfers.

In the UP administration, Pathak is in charge of the medical and health sectors, and speculation arose as a result of his letter that the deputy CM had not been informed of the moves.

One of the developments that became apparent as the Adityanath government entered damage control mode was that Swatantra Dev Singh, the cabinet minister in charge of the Jal Shakti department, began splitting the department’s workload with ministers of state Khatik and Ramkesh Nishad.

“Departmental work is usually concentrated in the hands of the cabinet minister. However, with recent developments, the workload has been divided in the Jal Shakti department to start with,” a UP government official said on condition of anonymity.

They were instructed to manage tasks associated with dam safety, drainage inspection, dam rehabilitation and improvement project (DRIP), and flood control in various divisions. Nishad was given responsibility for the work in central and eastern UP divisions such as Lucknow, Prayagraj, Azamgarh, Devipatan, and Basti, while Khatik was instructed to handle it in western UP divisions such as Saharanpur, Meerut, Moradabad, and Aligarh.

Nishad said to ThePrint that he was in charge of group C’s activities under the Jal Shakti department’s Civil Mechanical Organization.

“Along with the work of group C employees, we (the two MoS) can take meetings and make inspections. The government is working with full coordination,” he added.

The state’s two deputy chief executives, Maurya and Pathak, were each given the duty of overseeing the creation and execution of government programmes in 25 districts last month, the same number the CM had reserved for himself.

In addition to the responsibility for the divisions assigned to the cabinet ministers, the CM and deputy CMs will conduct an inspection.

“Giving one division each to deputy CMs made no sense. If deputy CMs are given what every cabinet minister is given, what is the difference between the deputy CMs and the other ministers? This was communicated to higher ups and a clear message was sent that deputy CMs should be given work as per their stature,” a senior UP BJP leader told ThePrint, not wanting to be named.

Coordination sessions per week
Bhupendra Chaudhary, who was named the BJP state president on August 25, asserted that the administration was carrying out the party’s policy while Maurya’s “organisation stronger than government” tweet garnered attention last month.

According to party insiders, ThePrint, the CM and his deputies hold a weekly coordination meeting every Monday at the CM’s home. The gathering was initiated last month.

“Since the last week of August, a meeting is held between the CM and deputy CMs every Monday at CM’s residence. It is a coordination meeting to ensure better tandem between the CMO and the deputy CMs,” said the senior BJP leader quoted above.

Amit Mohan Prasad was handed control of the micro, small & medium enterprise (MSME) department last week instead of the medical health department, where he had been under investigation for potential irregularities.

It is believed that Pathak’s letter against him led to his transfer.

Since the deputy CM’s letter went viral, it has been obvious that he is uncomfortable with Prasad continuing to serve as the department’s ACS. Under the condition of anonymity, a second UP government official told ThePrint that the deputy CM’s behaviour “suggests that deputy CMs are now being heard.”

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