March 10 has been etched in the annals of history as a day when history was created. Records were broken and new ones were made. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populated and most significant state in terms of electoral politics. You see, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has not just made one or two isolated records in Uttar Pradesh. He has, numerically speaking, created at least five different records. Let’s have a look at what these records are.
Record 1
Yogi Adityanath has become the first sitting chief minister to win a consecutive term after having served on the post for five years. In Uttar Pradesh’s 70-year-long history, never has a sitting chief minister achieved such a feat. The state and its people have generally not been very sympathetic to incumbent governments, especially chief ministers.
Yogi Adityanath, however, is no ordinary chief minister. He is an outlier, who has proven his mettle in a high-stakes battle.
Record 2
Yogi is only the fifth CM to win a consecutive term in UP ever. That puts Yogi in a coveted list of only four others – Sampurnanda in 1975, Channdrabahnu Gupta in 1962, Hemwati Nandan Bahaguna in 1974 and Narayan Dutt Tiwari in 1985
Record 3
Uttar Pradesh has had 21 chief ministers so far. Guess how many of them actually completed a five-year tenure? Just three.
These include Yogi Adityanath, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav.
Record 4
Yogi Adityanath has created another brand-new record. He is the first chief minister from the BJP to return to power. Before Yogi, UP saw four BJP chief ministers – Ram Prakash Gupta, Rajnath Singh, Kalyan Singh and Ram Prakash Gupta. None of them returned to power for a second term.
Record 5
Noida was a taboo. It still is, maybe. For politicians, Noida is a no-go zone. It is believed to jinx the winnability of Uttar Pradesh’s sitting chief ministers. An urban myth – the famed ‘Noida jinx’ has scared the mightiest of the mighty in Uttar Pradesh.
Yogi Adityanath never fell for this superstitious myth. On December 25 2018, Yogi Adityanath along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Noida to inaugurate Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line; thus, breaking the jinx. He has just won another term in office, and the ‘Noida jinx’ has been dismantled.
Read more: What led to the historic win of BJP in Muslim dominated areas?
There is another interesting facet to the re-election of Yogi Adityanath as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Yogi will be the first MLA CM to take oath in 15 years. In 2007, Mayawati took oath as an MLC and after her, Akhilesh Yadav was sworn in as CM in 2012 when he was an MLC. In 2017, Yogi took oath as chief minister while he was an MP.
In more ways than one, ‘March 10 2022’ has been recorded as a momentous day. For the BJP, the road to 2024 has just become a whole lot easier, while for Yogi Adityanath, the road to 7 Lok Kalyan Marg is getting clearer by the day.