Can Yogi Make History?

Yogi Adityanath is poised on the edge of a future that can change Indian politics. He brims with optimism, but a resurgent Akhilesh Yadav is giving him the battle of his life in UP

- Raj Chengappa With Prashant Srivastava

Yogi Adityanath, the ochre-robed, shaven-headed monk-turned politician, faces the biggest ever test of his life—but seems unfazed by the magnitude of the challenge. For five years, as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, he has ruled India’s most populous state with an iron fist sheathed in a saffron glove that was never far from controversy. Now the moment of reckoning has come, with 152 million voters about to decide whether to give him a second term or usher in a new dispensation. At his official residence in Lucknow, seated on a sofa draped with a saffron towel, flanked by a bronze statue of Lord Ram with a bow and arrow and a pichhwai of Lord Krishna, Adityanath makes for a picture brimming with optimism. “I’ve never lost and never accepted defeat,” he says.

That’s a fact. He has won five consecutive elections to the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat. This time, it’s a battle of somewhat different contours, though. And the stakes are incredibly high for both the 49-year-old Adityanath and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The election to the UP assembly is like the very axis on which Indian democracy spins. And Adityanath will create history of sorts if he is re-elected—no UP chief minister before him has ever won a second consecutive term after completing a full first tenure. (N.D. Tiwari did win two consecutive terms in 1985, but his first term lasted only seven months, and his second, six.) If he pulls off that feat, it will put the stamp of popular approval on Adityanath’s leadership and position him ahead of most others in the BJP as the party’s prime ministerial aspirant to succeed Narendra Modi.