With Uttar Pradesh's 2027 assembly elections edging into view, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has gone on the offensive — invoking the state's pre-2017 past to draw the starkest possible contrast with his own eight-year tenure. In a video post on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, Adityanath asked pointedly: what was Uttar Pradesh before 2017?

The four SP terms in Uttar Pradesh — and what 2013 came to symbolise

The Samajwadi Party governed Uttar Pradesh in 1989–91, 1993–95, 2002–07, and most recently 2012–17 under Akhilesh Yadav. It is that final term that became the most politically loaded. The 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots — which killed more than 60 people and displaced tens of thousands — became a defining wound, drawing sustained criticism of the SP administration's law-and-order response and cementing a narrative that the BJP has weaponised ever since.

Adityanath's figure of 'more than 1,500 riots' across all four SP tenures is the kind of cumulative, sweeping claim that is difficult to verify against official state records, and the research background flags it as unverified. What is not in dispute is that communal violence — its causes, its management, and its political aftermath — has been the central fault line in UP's BJP-versus-SP contest for decades.

How 2017 became Yogi Adityanath's founding myth

When Adityanath took charge in March 2017 after the BJP's landslide victory, law and order became the cornerstone of his brand. His government introduced anti-romeo squads, took stringent action on cow slaughter, and styled a broader crackdown on organised crime as proof of a new era. The phrase 'UP mein jungle raj khatam' — 'the jungle raj is over in UP' — became a campaign shorthand that his party has repeated at every subsequent election cycle.

Now, with less than a year to go before the state votes again, Adityanath is returning to the same well: frame the election as a binary choice between the disorder of the SP years and the order of his own tenure. The post's rhetorical device — opening with a question — is deliberate, designed to prime the audience before delivering the indictment.

SP's likely counter and the battle ahead

The Samajwadi Party has consistently disputed the BJP's characterisation of its governance record and is expected to respond with its own data on economic development, employment, and farmer welfare under the Akhilesh Yadav government. Yadav has also pointed to incidents under the Adityanath administration — including the 2020 Hathras case and other high-profile law-and-order controversies — as evidence that the BJP's self-portrait is selective.

The exchange is a preview of the narrative war that will dominate UP politics through 2027. The party that successfully owns the law-and-order story — either defending a record or prosecuting one — typically carries the state. That dynamic made UP's politics in 2017 and 2022, and it looks set to shape 2027 too.

The question now is whether eight years is enough distance to still run on 2013 — or whether voters in India's most populous state have a newer set of grievances to settle.