Yogi Adityanath, Keshav Prasad Maurya in portfolio tussle?

New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh’s new chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday met Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah in the wake of  purported tussle with his deputy and one of the two deputy chief ministers, Keshav Prasad Maurya, over a key portfolio.

Mr Maurya, party’s state unit chief, was also a strong contender for the chief minister’s post. Speculation is rife that Mr Maurya wants the home portfolio, which the chief minister also wants to keep with him.

The UP chief minister held two meetings with Mr Shah at the latter’s residence. Party’s UP organisational secretary Sunil Bansal was also president at the meeting where, sources said, the party leaders discussed portfolio allocations to Mr Adityanath’s ministers.

Earlier, UP Cabinet minister Siddhartha Nath Singh said the portfolios of new ministers are likely to be announced “very soon”.

“The portfolios are being worked out. The process for allocation of departments is on and hopefully it will be done very soon,” Mr Singh said. He is one of the two UP ministers entrusted with the task of acting as an interface between the government and the media.

Mr Shrikant Sharma is the other minister. In a development, Fateh Bahadur Singh, the BJP MLA from Campiyarganj in Gorakhpur, has offered to resign from his seat to facilitate the election of Yogi Adityanath from the said Assembly constituency. Currently, the UP CM is the Gorakhpur MP, and is not a member of either Houses of the UP Legislature. UP has a bicameral legislature.