TOP DRAWS

Regional players dominate the public mindspace when it comes to the performance of heads of Indian states

- KAUSHIK DEKA

1. YOGI ADITYANATH Uttar Pradesh 27.1% [19%]

In an unusual move, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has decided to campaign for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly election scheduled in February and March. To have the chief minister of one state campaigning in another is not unusual except for the fact that Mamata’s TMC and Akhilesh Yadav’s SP are not part of any formal alliance. Moreover, the TMC has no electoral stake in UP. Yet the SP reached out to Mamata, who had trounced the BJP in West Bengal last year, because it is up against one of the tallest leaders in the saffron stable—Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.