Many people called me, saying ‘Yogi has never even run a municipality, why are you making him CM’. The BJP won a landslide victory in the UP elections in 2017, bagging 325 seats in the 403-member Assembly, when it announced Yogi Adityanath, mahant (head priest) of the Gorakhpur temple, as the CM. The Home Minister assured investors that “along with the state government, the Centre is also committed to the development of Uttar Pradesh”. The Uttar Pradesh government laid the foundation stone of more than 250 projects worth around Rs 65,000 crore. The projects were announced during the Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit in February last year when an investment around Rs 4.68 lakh crore was proposed.

Source: Indian Express July 28, 2019 10:16 UTC