Confusion prevailed on Sunday over the much awaited expansion of the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet slated for Monday with the government hesitating in giving the go-ahead in view of the critical health of former Union finance minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley.

Jaitley is undergoing treatment at the All-India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.

A source said that the Raj Bhawan had made preparations for the Cabinet expansion but as no green signal had come from the state government, they had halted the process.

A source in the government said that initially Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had given a go-ahead for the Cabinet expansion and had also returned to Lucknow from Gorakhpur on Sunday evening but the critical health of Jaitley had forced the government to postpone the expansion.

The next date of Cabinet expansion will be announced later, the source said.

At present there are 43 ministers in the Council of Ministers headed by Yogi Adityanath — 20 Cabinet ministers including Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, nine ministers of state with independent charges and 13 ministers of State.

When the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet took the oath of office on March 17, 2017, it had 24 Cabinet ministers, nine ministers of state with independent charge and 13 ministers of state.

The Cabinet reshuffle has been necessitated by the election of several ministers to Lok Sabha and expulsion of Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party leader Om Prakash Rajbhar from the Cabinet in May. The ministers elected to the Lok Sabha are Rita Bahuguna Joshi, SP Singh Baghel and Satyadev Pachauri.

Sources said though the BJP central leadership has approved the Cabinet reshuffle, it is being delayed due to the critical health of Jaitley.