Ajay
Mohan Bisht, better known as Yogi Adityanath, is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
leader and the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. He was among the prominent
campaigners during the 2017 assembly elections when the BJP won an overwhelming
majority, bagging 312 seats in the 403-member House.

Adityanath
has been a Member of Parliament from the Gorakhpur constituency for five
consecutive terms, from 1998. He is also the head priest, or mahant, of the Gorakhpur
Math.

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Adityanath
was born on June 5, 1972 in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal. His father, Anand
Singh Bisht, was a forest ranger.  He was
one of four brothers and three sisters.

He
founded the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a Hindu nationalist organisation that helped him
gain prominence and establish his own independent power base in Eastern UP.  At the age of 26, he became the youngest
Member of Parliament in the 12th Lok Sabha in 1998.

He
was sworn in as chief minister on March 18, 2017, a day after the BJP’s landslide
victory in the assembly elections, ousting the Samajwadi Party (SP).

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Adityanath
has often courted controversy with his staunch pro-Hindu stance and for
undermining the BJP earlier in his career.

One
of the most prominent examples of this is when he fielded Radha Mohan Das Agarwal
from Gorakhpur on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket against then-BJP Cabinet Minister Shiv
Pratap Shukla in the 2002 elections, who was defeated by a considerable margin.

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He
also threatened to field up to 70 candidates against the BJP in 2007, but
reached a compromise. He was also rumoured to have campaigned against the party
in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when the Congress-led UPA alliance won its second
consecutive term in power.

However, he is seen by some as a contender for Prime Minister in 2024,
having gained much popularity among the masses.