The big Fight.

• The big fight: The choice of ministers also reflects the high priority of states going to polls in the coming months. The fact that most of the addition in the number of ministers (compared to 2014) has been in junior ministers (who can be fresh faces with little or no political experience at the Centre) points to that too. Uttar Pradesh walked away with the maximum 9 berths (including that of the PM), Maharashtra came next with 8 followed by Bihar with 5 ministers (6 if we include Ram Vilas Paswan who will take the Rajya Sabha route). Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and J&K go to polls this year, Delhi and Bihar next year while West Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Assam go to polls in 2021. Going by region, the Hindi belt has the biggest chunk with 31 ministers (up from 23 in 2014), while there are five ministers from South and just two from the Northeast.