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Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma will be his deputies

Seven days after the U.P. Assembly election results, the Bharatiya Janata Party chose Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister-designate.

Adityanath will be the 21st chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the fourth from the saffron party.

A strong votary of construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, Adityanath drove BJP’s Hindutva campaign in the eastern UP in the just concluded Assembly polls.

Newly elected leader of BJP Legislature Party, Yogi Adityanath, designated as new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, flanked by Deputy Chief Ministers designate, Keshav Prasad Maurya (left) and Dinesh Sharma in Lucknow on Saturday.   | Photo Credit: Rajeev Bhatt

Updates:

8.40 p.m.:

He will be sworn in tomorrow at a ceremony at Kanshiram Smriti Upvan at 2.15 p.m. where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah will be present.

8.30 p.m.: CM designate Yogi Adityanath meets governor Ram Naik, claims stake to form the government. - ANI

8.00 p.m.: Venkaiah Naidu speaks at a press conference: This win in Uttar Pradesh is historic. It is a watershed moment in the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party because the BJP has become not only a national party but a common man’s party. The UP message is very clear. The message is, the country wants to move with Modi. This message mandate is for development. 

“Mandate is for development, mandate is against corruption, against black money...,” he said, with the Yogi by his side.

“This mandate is against caste politics, religous politics and vote bank politics,” he said, noting that all the five regions in UP and all communities had overwhlemingly voted for the saffron party.

7.00 p.m.: Confirmation is in. Yogi Adityanath to be the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Keshav Maurya and Dinesh Sharma are to be the State’s deputy CMs, reports Omar Rashid.

Who is Yogi Adityanath?

He runs the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Purvanchal, an outfit that has been accused of instigating communal tension.

Yogi Adityanath, whose real name is Ajay Singh Bisht, is a five-time BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. He is 44 years old.

A Thakur from Uttarakhand by birth, Adityanath earned a graduate degree in Science from Garhwal University in Srinagar.

His Lok Sabha profile says he is a “religious missionary and social worker.”

Awaidhnath, Mahant of the powerful and wealthy Gorakhnath Temple who had won Gorakhpur thrice consecutively, passed on both his political and religious legacy to Adityanath. Awaidhnath died in 2014.

Adityanath runs the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Purvanchal, an outfit that has been often accused of instigating communal tension.

This Bajrang Dal-style organisation is particularly effective in the east U.P. districts of Deoria, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharthnagar. Here, its activists have been accused of converting minor incidents into communal conflagrations.

However during these elections, the Hindu Yuva Vahini broke after some of its members refused to retire some of their candidates. Adityanath expelled some of them.

During the recent elections, the BJP leadership for the first time deployed Adityanath extensively in western U.P. after the first phase.

Earlier News:

BJP names controversial leader Yogi Adityanath for UP CM post

Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma will be the deputy chief ministers of the state.

Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday named its firebrand leader Yogi Adityanath for the post of Uttar Pradesh chief minister. Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma will be the deputy chief ministers of the state.

A five-time MP from Gorakhpur, Adityanath was elected as the UP BJP legislature party leader at a meeting of the party MLAs led by Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav on Saturday evening at Lok Bhawan in Lucknow.

Until Friday, Union Minister Manoj Sinha, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya and eight-time MLA from Shahjahanpur Suresh Khanna were being projected as the top contenders for the post by their partymen.

However, the race for the Chief Ministerial post in the politically crucial state took a dramatic turn on Saturday; minutes before the party MLAs met at Lok Bhawan in Lucknow to decide the CM designate.

BJP’s firebrand leader Adityanath, who was not even in the race until Friday, emerged as the lead contender.

As the meeting was underway to decide the CM designate, the supporters of Adityanath chanted ’Yogi, Yogi’ outside Lok Bhawan. Reports suggested that slogans in favour of the 44-year-old controversial leader were chanted also at the meeting.

The accession of Adityanath, the five-time MLA from Gorakhpur, can strengthen the BJP’s ’Hindutva’ establishment in the state, but may provide enough fodder to the opposition to attack the saffron party on lines of ’divisive politics’.

In the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the party secured 312 seats in a 403-member house, while its allies Apna Dal (Soneylal) and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party got nine and four seats, respectively.

Samajwadi Party bagged 47 seats, while its ally, the Congress, stooped to its lowest tally with seven seats.

Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party could manage to get only 19 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly.