UP reshuffle: Is it bitter pill for Yogi or just pragmatic politics?

The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to reassign departments of 16 top bureaucrats is likely to have wider implications on how Yogi Adityanath’s second consecutive chief ministerial tenure is perceived not just by the bureaucratic corps but also among his cabinet colleagues.

Days prior to the reshuffle, the Centre rejected the UP government’s request to grant an extension of term to Adityanath’s trusted additional chief secretary (ACS) Awanish Awasthi. The Centre’s refusal meant that Awasthi, who as ACS held the charge of the crucial home department and was often dubbed in UP’s political and bureaucratic circles as chhote CM due to the reliance Adityanath placed on him, retired from service on Wednesday. There is, of course, some speculation in Lucknow that Adityanath may try to bring Awasthi back in an advisory role.

What also made the rejig intriguing was the CM’s nod to shunt out two of his other confidants – additional chief secretaries Navneet Sehgal and Amit Prasad – to relatively inconsequential departments.

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These developments aside, some other events that preceded the reshuffle by a few weeks or months, merit recounting for the sake of better perspective. Though seemingly unrelated, the reshuffle comes at a time when Adityanath’s exclusion from the BJP’s recently reconstituted Parliamentary Board has reignited speculation in the power corridors about a concerted effort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to scuttle the UP CM”s upward mobility in the party hierarchy. The Centre’s refusal to grant Awasthi an extension despite Adityanath’s lobbying, sources say, was also a manifestation of this brinkmanship between the PM and the Yogi.

Do babus enjoy more clout?

The rejig also coincides with rising instances of his ministers speaking out against an “uncooperative bureaucracy”. The state BJP grapevine had also been abuzz with insinuations that the CM had patronised the state’s babus so much that he was now being held hostage to a cabal of IAS officers, several of whom had, prior to the BJP’s 2017 assembly poll win, been advisers and confidants of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav or BSP supremo Mayawati.

Between May and July, the Adityanath government was rocked by instances of ministers, including deputy chief ministers Brajesh Pathak and Keshav Prasad Maurya, going public with their complaints against bureaucrats in their respective departments giving the impression that the state’s executive was at war with its own administrative wing. In July, Adityanath’s junior minister for the Jal Shakti department, Dinesh Khatik, had shot off an angry ‘resignation letter’ to Union Home Minister Amit Shah alleging widespread corruption and claiming that bureaucrats in his ministry had “excluded and sidelined” him from all decision-making on account of him being a Dalit.

In August, to soothe frayed nerves through a somewhat uncharacteristic gesture of being accommodative of the concerns of his cabinet colleagues, Adityanath had asked his ministers and BJP MLAs to give him a list of bureaucrats who “do not listen” to their requests or suggestions.

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The reshuffle, sources in the UP government say, is reflective of the feedback that Adityanath received. Pathak, who also holds the health portfolio in the UP cabinet, had aired a litany of grievances against Amit Prasad, then the ACS overseeing the departments of health and family welfare. Among other things, Prasad had been accused of not taking Pathak’s consent before ordering transfers of doctors and other officials of the health department. In Thursday’s exercise, Prasad, who enjoyed the CM’s confidence, was moved from health and family welfare to the low-key departments of MSME, Khadi and Export Promotion.

Parth Sarthi Sen Sharma, who had previously been handpicked by Adityanath to serve as CEO of the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority and has a reputation for being a stickler for rules and procedure, has now been given charge of medical, health and family welfare departments as principal secretary. Similarly, Keshav Prasad Maurya’s demand for a new bureaucratic head for his rural development department has also been met in the reshuffle with Himanshu Kumar being appointed as its principal secretary

Yogi losing control?

A section of BJP leaders in the state believes that the reshuffle showed Adityanath caving in to pressure from his ministers. Some of them may have been deliberately raising complaints at the behest of the party’s central leadership to embarrass him. This section claims Modi and Shah want to keep Adityanath on a tight leash due to their conflicting political interests with him. That Adityanath had to accept the Centre’s decision of not giving Awasthi an extension and also transfer some of his trusted bureaucrats from important departments to inconsequential ones without creating a fuss only to appease his ministers is also being averred to as an indicator of the Yogi’s diminishing clout over the government he heads.

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However, another section of party leaders, particularly those close to the CM, concede that while the Centre’s move against Awasthi was a snub, the reshuffle per se showed Adityanath as a more pragmatic and seasoned version of the man who helmed the government in its previous term.

“Yes, some key officers who enjoyed his trust and were posted to important departments have been moved to low-key departments to keep the ministers happy, but this shows that in his second term as CM, Adityanath doesn’t want to give the impression of being unconcerned about the grievances of his cabinet. I think he should be lauded for this. There is also a focus on bringing efficient officers to important departments so that we can better fulfil our promises to the people and realise the vision of development and prosperity that both, the PM and the CM, share for UP,” a senior minister in the Adityanath cabinet told The Federal.

If Adityanath lost Awasthi and was forced to pack off confidant and ACS Navneet Sehgal from the crucial information department to the inconsequential sports department, he did succeed in not just retaining but also boosting the profile of one very trusted aide. Sanjay Prasad, the 1995-batch IAS officer who has known Adityanath for practically the entirety of the latter’s political career, is now being hailed as the new Awasthi – the most important and powerful bureaucrat in the UP government.

Already serving as the CM’s principal secretary since 2019, Sanjay Prasad will now also hold the charge of the departments of home and information. Sanjay’s association with the CM dates back to 1999, when he was posted as chief development officer of Gorakhpur. Adityanath had started his journey in electoral politics from Gorakhpur in 1998 when he first entered the Lok Sabha from this constituency. Sources say Sanjay has enjoyed Adityanath’s trust ever since. Over the past three years, the IAS officer has been a permanent figure in the CM’s entourage.

BJP insiders say that Adityanath’s decision to carry out an extensive reshuffle within six months of returning as CM indicates that he doesn’t want regular confrontation with cabinet colleagues to become the highlight of his current term. Sources say there is also a conscious attempt by the CM to change the perception that he had outsourced governance to a select few in the bureaucracy and that, instead, he wanted new officers with fresh ideas and clean records to help him run key departments.

“We are still in the first year of our current term, and the reshuffle should be seen as a statement of intent. Good officers have been brought in. Those who had a poor rapport with their ministers or were acting like they owned the government have been moved out, even if the CM had a good working relationship with them. I can’t say whether our central leadership forced his hand to make these changes but what has been done is a welcome step,” another minister in the Yogi cabinet who had been critical of “arrogant and obstructionist” babus of his ministry for the past few months told The Federal.

A UP BJP functionary claimed that Adityanath “may not be happy about letting an Awasthi or a Sehgal go, but he has to be pragmatic… the concerns of the party and its ministers cannot be wished away and it is a good thing that the CM has realised this”.