Deciphering UP's Five-Year Date With The Yogi

No wonder, soon after taking over as the CM, Yogi clarified that his government would follow the party’s and Modi’s line of sabka saath, sabka vikas. No section of the state’s citizenry, no community or caste would be discriminated against by his government. He was equivocal about the Muslims that they particularly have nothing to fear. He also instructed the government officials not to discriminate anyone.

- Ajay K. Mehra

If the result of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) legislative assembly election on March 11, 2017 elicited a stunning surprise from the rival political parties and election experts alike, the selection of Adityanath Yogi as Chief Minister of the state a week later (18 March 2017) followed a spate of criticism after a numbing silence amongst the commentators. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) predictably put up a brave front in spite of the fact that despite a clamour for the Yogi in one section of the party, the names floated even remotely did not suggest him to be a possibility. Obviously, where the names of the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Minister of State Manoj Sinha, as also that of the UP party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya were floated and doing rounds with intense speculations, emergence of the Yogi as the joker in the pack stunned the expectant commentators, though it elicited exultations from amongst his supporters, there are numerous in the category.