NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing party on Saturday picked a controversial firebrand leader to head India’s most populous state, where it won a landslide victory last week.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won an absolute majority in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 220 million people.
After an hours-long meeting with local BJP legislators on Saturday, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu announced 44-year-old Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh’s next chief minister.
"Tomorrow Yogi Adityanath will take oath as chief minister," Naidu said at a press conference in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow late Saturday.
Earlier, television footage showed BJP workers garlanding and feeding sweets to the Hindu hardliner who was draped in his iconic saffron-coloured robe.
A five-time MP from the BJP, Adityanath is a popular leader known for his fiery Hindu rhetoric who has stirred controversies over his polarising and inflammatory speeches against Muslims – who form nearly 20 per cent of the state’s population. He has often fanned flames over religious conversions, inter-religion marriages and has reportedly been arrested and charged with several crimes in the past including rioting, attempt to murder and trespassing on burial places.
The rise of the Hindu priest-turned-politician in Uttar Pradesh, a state prone to sectarian strife, surprised many after Modi made his development agenda the focus of his campaign in the region, which is traditionally fractured along caste and religious lines.
Adityanath is known for his hard-line Hindutva ideology and anti-Muslim statements. He is popular among his supporters for fiery speeches against minorities.
The chief minister-designate also runs an extremist organisation, Hindu Yuva Vahini, which has been accused of instigating communal tension. He describes himself as a "religious missionary and social worker" on his Lok Sabha profile.
During the recent elections in the highly-polarised state, he had stirred controversy by making claims of discrimination against Hindus and stoked anti-Muslim sentiments.
He had alleged discrimination in the supply of power to Hindu and Muslim festivals and also in the allocation of land for graveyards and crematoriums.
Adityanath has also been accused of spearheading a forced conversion initiative, called Ghar Wapsi, which targeted Muslims and Christians.
During the recent deterioration of relations between India and Pakistan, he passed statements against those Bollywood actors who supported continuation of cultural ties between the two countries.
"Shah Rukh Khan should remember that if people would boycott his films, he would also have to wander in the streets like a normal Muslim … These people are speaking in the language of terrorists. I think there is no difference between the language of Shah Rukh Khan and Hafiz Saeed," he was quoted as saying.
Most recently, he lauded US President Trump’s travel ban that aimed to halt immigrants from a handful of Muslim-majority countries from entering America, saying India needed similar action to check terrorism.
