Shekhar Gupta: Yogi soars, UP sinks

Uttar Pradesh under Yogi has seen little change for the better. But his personal political fortunes have soared enough to compete for attention with Modi

If Narendra Modi has any competition for national headlines, it comes from his party’s chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath.

Check out the main headlines on the day the prime minister delivered his carefully crafted address to the annual World Economic Forum session in Davos, held virtually this year. Find much mention of it? All of that prime real estate in the national mind space was occupied by the farmers’ protests, of course. Just that the cherry on that cake also was Yogi Adityanath’s police filing that ludicrous FIR under IPC sections as grave as sedition and conspiracy against six