UP CM Yogi to contest 2022 assembly polls from Ayodhya? Here’s what sitting MLA has to say

Ved Prakash Gupta, the BJP MLA from Ayodhya, said on Sunday he is ready to vacate his seat for the chief minister.

Ved Prakash Gupta, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) sitting MLA from the Ayodhya assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh, said on Sunday he is ready to vacate his seat for chief minister Yogi Adityanath, according to Hindustan Times’ sister publication Live Hindustan. Gupta’s statement has triggered speculations that Adityanath may contest next year’s assembly elections from Ayodhya.

UP CM Yogi Adityanath (HT File Photo)

“If the chief minister wants to contest from Ayodhya, I’m ready to give up my seat for him. It will be a matter of great pride for the residents of the city if CM Yogi contests from here,” Gupta said, when asked about Adityanath contesting the upcoming elections, which are likely to take place early next year. The legislator, however, later clarified that the party will decide which candidate fights from which constituency, adding that if Adityanath is fielded as a candidate, he himself will campaign for the chief minister.

At present, Adityanath, 49, is an MLC or a member of the legislative council or the upper house of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly. A five-term member of Parliament from Gorakhpur, he was in his fifth stint as a Lok Sabha MP when he was appointed as the chief minister of the northern state following the BJP’s comprehensive win in the assembly elections which took place in February-March 2017. Adityanath, who won his first parliamentary election in 1998 at the age of 26, later resigned as an MP as rules mandate that a chief minister can only be a member of either house of a legislative assembly.

Since being elevated as the chief minister of the country’s most populous and politically most significant state, Adityanath has campaigned extensively for the BJP in several elections.