UP longest serving CM Yogi erases 'mafia tag', lures investments

While remaining committed to the core Hindutva agenda, Uttar Pradesh's longest-serving Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath proved his sceptics wrong by emerging as a tough administrator and by successfully taming the mafia gangsters over the past six years.

Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) : Yogi Adityanath, who became longest serving Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, has asserted that the country's most populous State has successfully shed its mafia tag and moved on to attract investments and rapid industrial development raising new hopes among the younger generation.

On completion of six years as CM on Saturday, Yogi said that their State has got rid of politics of caste, religion and nepotism thanks to progressive and forward-looking measures initiated under the BJP rule. He said that UP became a peaceful state and aimed at Rs 35 lakh crore worth of investments through the latest global summit held in February.

Yogi became BJP's unexpected choice for the post of Chief Minister in 2017 for a State which was then branded as a complicated one bogged down with violence and mafia. Proving critics and sceptics wrong, Yogi Adityanath went on to complete six consecutive years in office on March 25. Yogi broke the record of Congress ex-CM Sampoornanand who served from 1954 to 1960.

Also, UP's longest-serving CM had the distinction of leading the saffron party to win elections in the country's most populous State in 2022 and formed his government for a second consecutive term. Political commentators called it a tremendous transformation for the chief priest of India's respected shrine, Gorakhnath Peeth into an able administrator.

After six years in government, all voices that talked about Yogi's lack of political and administrative experience have fallen silent. His singular achievement is stated to be a no-holds-barred crackdown on criminals and gangsters, which helped in making the once looked-down-upon State a welcome destination for investments.

Yogi got the nickname 'Bulldozer Baba' for ordering the demolition of illegal properties of mobsters and gangsters who were neutralised in hundreds of encounters in the last six years of his rule. A few days ago, the Uttar Pradesh government announced that nearly ten thousand encounters took place between police and criminals in the state in the last six years and over 63 criminals had been eliminated.