“Rule of Law and Transformation: Yogi Adityanath’s First Term and the Remaking of Uttar Pradesh (2017–2022) Part 26”, MyIndMakers, 16 Sep 2026.

“When Yogi Adityanath took the oath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh on March 19, 2017, he inherited a state that was, by the most charitable reading, a developmental catastrophe. The indices of UP’s condition at the time of the BJP’s historic election victory told a grim story: the state ranked among the lowest in per capita income among India’s major states, its law and order situation was among the worst in the country by every available metric, its power infrastructure delivered fewer than ten hours of electricity daily to most rural households, its industrial investment had been minimal for over a decade, its police force was thoroughly politicised and widely regarded by citizens as an instrument of oppression rather than protection, and its welfare delivery systems were riddled with the corruption and patronage capture that had accumulated over two decades of SP and BSP misrule.

The question the country was asking — that UP’s 220 million citizens were asking — was whether a government with an absolute majority, a clear mandate, and a Chief Minister of fierce personal conviction could change a political culture as deeply entrenched and structurally resistant to change as UP’s had become. Five years later, the answer was unambiguous: it could, and it had.

The Law and Order Revolution: From Jungle Raj to the Rule of Law

The most immediate and viscerally felt transformation of the first Yogi term was in law and order. Within weeks of taking office, the government announced what would become the defining policy instrument of the Yogi era: the anti-mafia drive, backed by the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, commonly known as the Gangster Act, and supplemented by the aggressive use of the National Security Act (NSA), the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act against organised criminal networks.

The numbers document a transformation without precedent in UP’s post-independence history. Between March 2017 and March 2022, UP police registered over 160 encounters with criminal gangs, in which more than 150 wanted criminals were killed and thousands arrested…..”

Read the full article at MyIndMakers.