After the BJP’s massive victory, Yogi went to attend the BJP’s parliamentary board meeting on March 16. The then BJP president Amit Shah told Adityanath that he wanted to meet him. BJP sources said Shah met Yogi at his residence, but did not divulge anything specific. Yogi returned to Gorakhpur on March 17, when he again received a call from Shah, who asked him to reach Delhi immediately. It was late evening and there was no train or flight from Gorakhpur to Delhi at that time.
The next day Shah sent a chartered plane to Gorakhpur to bring Yogi. Shah met Yogi and asked him to reach Lucknow, where he was to be elected as the leader of the BJP’s state legislature party and take oath as the CM of the country’s most populous state. BJP’s conscious move to keep Yogi at the forefront in UP has worked or it seems.
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Cut to 2022: The head priest of Gorakhnath Peeth has been marked as the party’s leading candidate to contest from Gorakhpur (Urban). Observers feel that Yogi may have firmly grasped the saffron outfit in the politically important state, which has seen the rise of regional satraps such as BSP chief Mayawati and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, followed by his son, current SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. Huh.
Party leaders are quick to draw a close comparison between Yogi and former CM late Kalyan Singh, who took over the reins of UP in 1991, when the BJP won 221 out of 425 seats, garnering nearly 32% vote share. This was the time when the Ram Mandir movement was at its peak and Kalyan was supported by BJP stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani. Kalyan’s resignation following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 2 December 1992 anointed him as the poster boy of Hindutva.
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The BJP’s political fortunes dwindled between the rise of the SP and the BSP until 2000, when senior party leader Rajnath Singh took over as the CM of UP. But that too lasted for 18 months until the 2002 assembly elections, when the BJP’s seats slipped to 88 out of 403 seats. After a fluid post-poll situation, the BJP and the BSP joined hands to form a government led by Mayawati, who is considered Mulayam’s biggest political rival in the state. The BJP pulled out of the government on August 25, 2003, and enough rebel BSP legislators allowed Yadav to become chief minister in September 2003, with the support of independents and smaller parties.
BJP insiders say that after the 2002 defeat, the party tried to support such leaders. Uma Bharti, Kalraj Mishra and Surya Pratap Shahi.
“But the idea didn’t work and for the next 14 years, the BJP’s political space continued to shrink,” said a party leader. BJP’s numbers came down to 51 in 2007 and 47 in 2012 assembly elections. The rise of the BJP under PM Narendra Modi in 2014 created a saffron wave in the state and the 2017 assembly elections saw the BJP and its allies win a massive 325 seats. “The party now needed a face who could connect it with the political landscape of UP,” the BJP leader said. Yogi, who was supported by the RSS, the ideological head of the BJP, became the main alternative.
UP BJP spokesperson Hero Bajpai said, “Yogi’s clean image and hard work has undoubtedly made the party stand firm in UP.” He said Adityanath reflects the style of working that matches that of PM Modi. Sources close to Yogi say that he not only broke Noida’s woes by visiting the city several times, but also visited all 75 districts to review development projects, besides assessing the current situation during the pandemic.
Throughout it all, Yogi achieved national trajectory with the BJP, including as the party’s star campaigner during elections in the Left bastion of Kerala, the TMC’s bastion of Bengal and various north-eastern states. . Not surprisingly, the BJP and its saffron mascot, Yogi, are set to undergo the litmus test in the next few months.
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