Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that he is ready to contest as an MLA candidate in the upcoming Assembly election in the State on whichever seat is deemed suitable by the BJP.

He said this during an interaction with reporters in Lucknow on January 1 evening. “I am ready to fight Assembly poll, from Gorakhpur, Ayodhya, whichever seat the party thinks is suitable,” he is reported to have said. Currently, Mr. Adityanath is a member of the Uttar Pradesh legislative Assembly, which he had assumed after being made Chief Minister and after resigning his Lok Sabha seat of Gorakhpur in 2017.

Sources close to Mr. Adityanath said that the statement was in a manner of throwing down the gauntlet to Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav who had announced in November that he would not be contesting Assembly seats while helming his party’s poll campaign. Mr. Yadav is the Lok Sabha member from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh.

“This declaration by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath shows that he is confident of victory, and is not afraid of any attempts to tie him down to his seat during the campaign for the poll,” said a close aide to the Chief Minister.

Election is scheduled early this year, with the Election Commission of India team being told by political parties in the State that they were in favour of holding poll on time, despite the looming threat of a third wave fuelled by the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus.