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Updated: May 31, 2019 18:11 IST

Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party chief Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, 61, who won his second Lok Sabha poll from Chandauli in eastern UP, took oath as union minister in the Modi government on Thursday.

Appointed in 2016 as the union minister of state for HRD in the previous Modi government, Pandey had resigned in August 2017 and given charge of the state which sends 80 parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha.

Just before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Pandey’s brother, Jitendra Nath Pandey’s daughter-in-law Amruta, had joined the Congress after a closed-door meeting with Priyanka Gandhi, the Congress in-charge of eastern UP.

Pandey won against Samajwadi Party candidate Sanjay Singh Chauhan with close to 14,000 votes. A Brahmin face of the BJP in UP along with deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, Pandey’s induction in the Modi government is being viewed as an attempt to connect with the influential upper castes who comprise 9% of the voters in UP.