Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that he is ready to contest in the coming assembly election.

Setting aside all confusions regarding his contesting from any assembly segment in the coming elections, Yogi said he is ready for it. Yogi’s announcement is significant as his principal opponent Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party has declined to do so. The SP Chief had recently said that he would not be contesting assembly polls in UP and instead campaign for party candidates. However later on he stated that the party in this regard would take any decision. The other leaders from the opposition including Priyanka Gandhi, Jayant Choudhury and Mayawati have not made any announcement in this regard so far.

On Saturday, Yogi Adityanath was in Gorakhpur, his home district to participate in various programmes. While talking to media persons, UP CM said that it is up to the party leaders to decide about the assembly segment from where he would contest. He said that Ayodhya has been developed in a way that everyone in the world is talking about this place. Yogi said that the Deepotsava programme organized in Ayodhya every year is making records. According to him, now UP has become a favourite destination for investment and many big corporate houses have been coming to this place.

According to senior party leaders, Yogi Adityanath might contest the assembly election from Ayodhya or Gorakhpur. The sitting Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) legislator from Ayodhya, Ved Prakash Gupta has already announced to vacate the seat for CM Yogi. The kind of attention being paid to Ayodhya by Yogi indicates that he might contest from there.

It may be mentioned that in his 4.5 years tenure CM Yogi has visited Ayodhya 30 times and have been allocating funds generously for the development of this city. In the annual budget of 2021-22, Rs 140 crore was sanctioned for the all-around development of Ayodhya, Rs 100 crore for beautification, Rs 300 crore for the road construction, Rs 101 crore for the airport. At present work is going on in Ayodhya on projects worth Rs 3116 crore while detailed project reports (DPR) for works up to Rs 8000 crore have been prepared.