A week from now, October 20, Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi will host Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh.
The photographs of the police officer, Pravin Singh, kneeling down at Adtiyanath's feet with folded hands, went viral on the social media, forcing him to clarify his stand.
Ravi Kishan, the BJP's candidate, is an outsider. The BSP-SP candidate is from the powerful Nishad community. Yogi faces a tough task in ensuring that the Gorakhpur seat, which he represented from 1998 to 2017, stays with the BJP.
The priest informed that seven rooms of the CM's residence were 'purified'.
The BJP's 2022 assembly election win may have further consolidated Adityanath's stock within the BJP. The saffron party is now set to win the UP state polls twice in a row, a feat achieved by no other party in three decades.
The BJP is banking on development. The opposition is raking up caste identities and the dangers of hyper nationalism.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
When the temple issue predominated BJP's discourse, its victory margins have been narrow.
As CM, he took decisions that confirmed his image as a Hindutva mascot. Early in the first term, he banned illegal slaughterhouses and the state police cracked down on cow slaughter. But the menace of stray cattle created disquiet among farmers, presenting the Adityanath government with a new challenge.
In recent weeks, reports have come out from Uttar Pradesh of members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini thrashing couples, shutting down meat shops. Many say that the group formed in 2002 by Yogi Adityanath has been emboldened ever since his elevation to chief minister. Here's a look at the 2-million strong and growing group.
Mr Modi and Mr Shah will need him if they want to win UP again in 2022 and India in 2024. This signals a Yogi Adityanath-sized change in BJP politics, even under Mr Modi, Shekhar Gupta.
The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh battles its own and Opposition over the community's 'victimisation' and alleged preference to the Rajputs. Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
"Let them show whatever they have got. We are winning with a majority," Akhilesh Yadav said, dismissing predictions to the contrary on some TV channels.
'In Yogi's Raj, Hindu festivals are State festivals.' 'He celebrates them, so does his police force, as he boasted in the assembly on Tuesday.' 'Eid, Christmas -- these can be observed, but expect nothing from the State to facilitate these celebrations,' says Jyoti Punwani.
Almost everyone in Gorakhpur has a story about an Adityanath intervention that helped push through a piece of work that would've been otherwise impossible.
If Modi and Shah did not project Adityanath as CM, it was out of expediency, says Radhika Ramaseshan.
'Nitish is now a helpless junior ally of Hindutva.' 'He just cannot think of reining in the hoodlums raging, marauding and killing in the mohallas,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
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