Yogi Adityanath was on Thursday unanimously elected as the leader of the Uttar Pradesh BJP legislature party in a meeting in Lucknow, paving the way for taking oath as UP chief minister for a second term. However, the names for deputy chief ministers were not announced at the BJP legislature party meeting — a departure from 2017 when the party had announced the name of its CM and two deputy CMs.
Adityanath later met Governor Anandiben Patel and staked claim to form the next government in the state. The BJP legislature party meeting was held under the supervision of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and national vice-president Raghubar Das, who were appointed as the party’s central observers.
Though the meeting was for the BJP legislature group, newly elected legislators of the party’s two allies — Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Nishad Party — also attended it. Former deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma were present on the stage with Shah, Adityanath, party’s state in-charge Radha Mohan Singh and assembly election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan. In his speech, Shah addressed Maurya and Sharma as “poorva upmukhyamantri (former deputy CMs)”. Sources said during the hour-long meeting, only the formal process of electing Adityanath as the leader of the legislature party was executed.
Shah credited both ‘Modi ji’ and ‘Yogi ji’ for the saffron party’s victory in the just-concluded Assembly elections. Referring to PM Narendra Modi as “a hardworking party worker”, Shah told the newly-elected MLAs, “If you have to name one party worker who worked most diligently in the UP Assembly elections, then it would be PM Modi.”
He said efforts made by PM Modi at the Centre and Adityanath in the state brought stability in UP that had been missing for long due to the deterioration in the political ideology.
