Yogi Adityanath to be UP Chief Minister: Is this the new BJP politics?

Yogi Adityanath to be sworn in as Uttar Pradesh CM on Sunday, March 19.

In a surprising move, the BJP on Saturday announced Yogi Adityanath, the controversial MP from Gorakhpur, as the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, putting an end to all the suspense which has been brewing ever since the party won a historic mandate in the state. While speculation was rife over the names of Rajnath Singh, Manoj Sinha, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, the saffron party ultimately chose Yogi Adityanath. Known for following a staunch Hindutva ideology and his strong anti-Muslim statements, Yogi certainly was not the leader people of Uttar Pradesh were expecting to be their chief minister. The decision to give him charge of a state as important as UP, only seems to endorse the thinking that the BJP still prefers Ram Temple over development.

But with how the BJP managed to polarise the electorate in the last phases of poll campaigning, Yogi’s selection should not come as a surprise. After talking about demonetisation, black money, corruption and Akhilesh’s alleged bad governance during initial campaigning, the top leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, changed track to rehtoric like kabristan and shamsaan ghaat while raising issues like religious discrimination in the distribution of laptops by the state government. This was seen as a bid to win Hindu voters, divided on caste lines.

However, even before the state went to polls, supporters of Yogi were seeing a potential CM in him. The man who has represented Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency for a record five times, commands a good Hindu support in eastern UP. Dissent within the BJP was visible when Yogi was not declared as the party’s CM face in UP. His Hindu Yuva Wahini fielded separate candidates in the Assembly constituencies of Gorakhpur region. While Yogi denied this, the rift helped the saffron party win all constituencies in Gorakhpur region, showing his mass support.

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Even before the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was declared, some of the developments, like demand for renaming of Muslim dominated Deoband as Dev Vrad and the attempts by some fringe elements to hoist a saffron flag atop a mosque, have already made some quarters uneasy. And with Yogi Adityanath being named the CM, apprehensions about the path the new government will take has only grown.

BJP’s impressive show in Muslim dominated areas in the polls was a reflection of a new trend of Muslim support to the saffron party. With the issue of triple talaq featuring in Modi’s poll speeches, a good number of Muslim women showed trust in the prime minister. But how long this the trust remains intact will depend to a large extent on Yogi’s governance.