PANCHUR: Tears welled up in Yogi Aditynath’s father Anand Singh Bisht’s eyes as he watched the swearing in of Yogi Adityanath as the UP chief minister. In the early 1990s, it took time for him to digest the decision of his son, Ajay Singh Bisht, to leave the village to go on a spiritual journey.
On Sunday, as he glued to the TV watching Yogi’s swearing-in ceremony held in Lucknow, Bisht had a word of advice for the firebrand Hindutva advocate. “I hope he will show respect for all religions,” he said, speaking to ET at his house.
Anand Singh Bisht, who is a resident of a small hamlet Panchur in Uttarakhand, also hopes that one day his son would become the country’s top leader. “He’ll now be serving India’s most important state but soon he’ll be at the Centre, serving the entire country,” Bisht told reporters.
Although his family watched Adityanath’s swearing-in ceremony on television in its modest home in Panchur village, hundreds of sadhus wearing saffron robe attended the mega-function where PM Modi was the chief guest. During the oath-taking ceremony, his supporters chanted ‘Har Har Yogi’.
Several top leaders from across the country attended the swearing-in at the Kanshi Ram Smriti Upvan in Lucknow. Apart from Modi, there were BJP national president Amit Shah, party veteran LK Advani, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP ally N Chandrababu Naidu, Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and over a dozen Union ministers. However, no one from the Bahujan Samaj Party attended the function.
