Firebrand leader Adityanath UP CM
new delhi — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing party on Saturday picked a controversial firebrand leader to head India’s most populous state, where it won a landslide victory last week.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won an absolute majority in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 220 million people and seen as a bellwether of national politics, in a massive vote of confidence for the premier halfway into his first term.
After an hours-long meeting with local BJP legislators on Saturday, senior party leader M. Venkaiah Naidu announced 44-year-old Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh’s next chief minister. “Tomorrow Yogi Adityanath will take oath as chief minister,” Naidu said at a press conference in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow on Saturday.
Naidu said Adityanath — who comes from the Rajput community — wanted two other “senior leaders” to help him run the government smoothly and state BJP chief Maurya and Lucknow Mayor Sharma were chosen as Deputy Chief Ministers.
A five-time MP from the BJP, Adityanath is a popular leader known for his fiery rhetoric who has stirred controversies over his polarising and inflammatory speeches against Muslims — who form nearly 20 per cent of the state’s population.
Most recently, he lauded US
PM @narendramodi says development & growth is his primary agenda. allowing hindutva hardliners to helm a major state is a costly mistake,”
Malini Parthasarathy senior journalist
President Trump’s travel ban that aimed to halt immigrants from a handful of Muslim-majority countries from entering America, saying India needed similar action to check terrorism.
He has often fanned flames over religious conversions, interreligion marriages and has reportedly been arrested and charged with several crimes in the past including rioting, attempt to murder and trespassing on burial places.
The rise of the priest-turnedpolitician in UP surprised many after Modi made his development agenda the focus of his campaign in the region, which is traditionally fractured along caste and religious lines.
Opposition parties lashed out at the BJP over the election of the Hindutva leader for the top post in the country’s most populated state. —