Modi Cabinet: No new faces from Uttar Pradesh, but some old ones dropped

Besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an MP from Varanasi, the Union Cabinet has three from UP — Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani and Mahendra Nath Pandey. While Singh and Irani were both part of the previous government, Pandey, a second-term MP from Chandauli, was inducted as a Union Minister of State in July 2016, but was dropped after being appointed State BJP chief in 2017, ahead of the Assembly polls.

Santosh Kumar Gangwar (Bareilly), an eight-term MP, and Hardeep Singh Puri, a Rajya Sabha member from UP, have been inducted as MoS (independent charge).

The others from UP who took oath as MoS were General V K Singh (retd), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti and Sanjeev Kumar Balyan. While Singh and Jyoti were part of the outgoing government, Balyan was inducted in 2014 but dropped in 2017.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who hails from Allahabad and is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Jharkhand, also took oath as a Cabinet minister.

Meanwhile, some of the prominent faces from UP in the previous government have been dropped. These include Maneka Gandhi, Uma Bharti (did not contest the elections), Mahesh Sharma, Manoj Sinha (lost from Ghazipur), Rajya Sabha member Shiv Pratap Shukla and Satyapal Singh (Baghpat).

Apna Dal (S) leader Anupriya Patel, who was made MoS in 2016, has also been dropped. Party sources said the ally is likely to be accommodated in a reshuffle of the UP Cabinet.