There have been reports in a section of media that the RSS played a key
role in the surprise appointment of hardcore Hindutva leader Yogi
Adityanath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh while ignoring Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah's preference for
someone with an administrative experience and without a distinct caste
identity. However, BJP sources have denied any such intervention, and to
make it clear that Yogi Adityanath has been Shah's choice since the
beginning and that ultimately, he prevailed upon the Prime Minister to
go with his choice. In the meanwhile, the RSS, whose highest body for
policy formation, Akhil Bhartiya Pratinidhi Sabha, is meeting in
Coimbatore, has officially denied media reports that RSS chief Mohan
Bhagwat called up PM Modi and urged him to appoint Yogi Adityanath as
Chief Minister instead of Junior Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, who was
considered PM Modi's choice.
BJP insiders recall how Shah was impressed with Yogi Adityanath's organizing skills and mass base when he was appointed General Secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh back in 2013 and started intensive tours of the state in order to revive the defunct party organization at the micro level. Shah visited Gorakhpur many times and interacted with Yogi Adityanath. Close associates of Shah recall an incident when the BJP chief, who that time had no security and used to travel in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, had taken a road blocked by some agitating villagers and was stuck there. Shah made a few calls and many volunteers of Yogi Adityanath's organization, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, arrived on motorcycles within minutes and cleared the way for him.
With his hard-core Hindutva image and mass following, Yogi Adityanath was an ideal choice for Shah's game plan to revive the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. After a massive win in the Lok Sabha, whose credit goes to Shah, he decided to test the waters by making Yogi Adityanath in-charge of the assembly by-elections which were necessitated September 2014 because many BJP MLAs had been elected to Lok Sabha. The Yogi campaigned extensively outside the Gorakhpur belt; he was seen making provocative speeches in communally-sensitive Western Uttar Pradesh which was recovering from the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. Of the 11 seats won by the BJP, in the 2012 assembly elections, eight were won by the Samajwadi Party in the by-elections. This was a big setback to Amit Shah's Yogi experiment which aimed at cashing in on Yogi's image in Western UP. However, Shah stated that by-poll results across the country in which BJP suffered major defeats were reflective of the voter's tendency to go with the ruling party, especially when the state government was not close to
Yogi Adityanath took oath as Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister along with 45 ministers.
Shah made amends in UP and changed the state president. He replaced Brahmin Laxmi Kant Vajpayee with Keshav Prasad Maurya, Other Backward Caste leader. He started making a rainbow coalition by bringing in leaders of different castes from other parties. He mainly poached from the BSP. His target area was Non-Yadav OBCs and Non-Jatav Scheduled Caste leaders. The BJP decided not to project any Chief Ministerial face and instead decided to use photos of Rajnath Singh (a Thakur), Kalraj Mishra ( a Brahmin), Uma Bharati and Keshav Prasad Maurya (both OBCs), apart from PM Modi and Amit Shah. However, Yogi Aditynath's supporters were upset that his pictures didn't find any place on the official BJP posters; nor was he made chairman of the campaign committee. That's why when rival SP-Congress floated the slogan "UP ko yeh saath pasand hai" with pictures of Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, they started their own counter-campaign by adding Yogi's pictures in the BJP's official posters, thus taking the count of pictures on the poster to seven with the slogan "UP ko yeh Saat (7) pasand hain".
In the meanwhile, all internal surveys done by the BJP pointed out that Yogi Adityanath was only second in terms of popularity after PM Narendra Modi. He was ahead of his Thakur rival and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and emerged as a strong choice for the post of Chief Minister among people supporting the party. He was included in the list of the star campaigners of the party and campaigned extensively in the entire state, including Ghaziabad, which borders Delhi. He raised polarizing issues like the alleged exodus of Hindus from Kairana, and the need to shut down Love Jihad and abattoirs.
He didn't throw his weight around or raise a dissenting voice as he had dune previous elections. In fact, when some of his supporters filed nomination papers under the banner of Hindu Yuva Vahini to run against BJP candidates, claiming that they had his blessings, he immediately issued statements disowning them and even called them criminal elements who were thrown out of the Hindu Yuva Vahini sometime ago. He took out a massive road show along with Shah in Gorakhpur and ensured that all the rebels were defeated by a huge margin.
BJP insiders recall how Shah was impressed with Yogi Adityanath's organizing skills and mass base when he was appointed General Secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh back in 2013 and started intensive tours of the state in order to revive the defunct party organization at the micro level. Shah visited Gorakhpur many times and interacted with Yogi Adityanath. Close associates of Shah recall an incident when the BJP chief, who that time had no security and used to travel in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, had taken a road blocked by some agitating villagers and was stuck there. Shah made a few calls and many volunteers of Yogi Adityanath's organization, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, arrived on motorcycles within minutes and cleared the way for him.
With his hard-core Hindutva image and mass following, Yogi Adityanath was an ideal choice for Shah's game plan to revive the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. After a massive win in the Lok Sabha, whose credit goes to Shah, he decided to test the waters by making Yogi Adityanath in-charge of the assembly by-elections which were necessitated September 2014 because many BJP MLAs had been elected to Lok Sabha. The Yogi campaigned extensively outside the Gorakhpur belt; he was seen making provocative speeches in communally-sensitive Western Uttar Pradesh which was recovering from the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. Of the 11 seats won by the BJP, in the 2012 assembly elections, eight were won by the Samajwadi Party in the by-elections. This was a big setback to Amit Shah's Yogi experiment which aimed at cashing in on Yogi's image in Western UP. However, Shah stated that by-poll results across the country in which BJP suffered major defeats were reflective of the voter's tendency to go with the ruling party, especially when the state government was not close to
Yogi Adityanath took oath as Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister along with 45 ministers.Shah made amends in UP and changed the state president. He replaced Brahmin Laxmi Kant Vajpayee with Keshav Prasad Maurya, Other Backward Caste leader. He started making a rainbow coalition by bringing in leaders of different castes from other parties. He mainly poached from the BSP. His target area was Non-Yadav OBCs and Non-Jatav Scheduled Caste leaders. The BJP decided not to project any Chief Ministerial face and instead decided to use photos of Rajnath Singh (a Thakur), Kalraj Mishra ( a Brahmin), Uma Bharati and Keshav Prasad Maurya (both OBCs), apart from PM Modi and Amit Shah. However, Yogi Aditynath's supporters were upset that his pictures didn't find any place on the official BJP posters; nor was he made chairman of the campaign committee. That's why when rival SP-Congress floated the slogan "UP ko yeh saath pasand hai" with pictures of Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, they started their own counter-campaign by adding Yogi's pictures in the BJP's official posters, thus taking the count of pictures on the poster to seven with the slogan "UP ko yeh Saat (7) pasand hain".
In the meanwhile, all internal surveys done by the BJP pointed out that Yogi Adityanath was only second in terms of popularity after PM Narendra Modi. He was ahead of his Thakur rival and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and emerged as a strong choice for the post of Chief Minister among people supporting the party. He was included in the list of the star campaigners of the party and campaigned extensively in the entire state, including Ghaziabad, which borders Delhi. He raised polarizing issues like the alleged exodus of Hindus from Kairana, and the need to shut down Love Jihad and abattoirs.
He didn't throw his weight around or raise a dissenting voice as he had dune previous elections. In fact, when some of his supporters filed nomination papers under the banner of Hindu Yuva Vahini to run against BJP candidates, claiming that they had his blessings, he immediately issued statements disowning them and even called them criminal elements who were thrown out of the Hindu Yuva Vahini sometime ago. He took out a massive road show along with Shah in Gorakhpur and ensured that all the rebels were defeated by a huge margin.
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