On Diwali 2026, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath travelled to Gorakhpur to inaugurate and lay the foundation stones of 52 development projects worth over ₹82 crore — directing every rupee toward the upliftment of the Van Tangiya community, a forest-dwelling group that spent decades on the margins of the state's development story.

Posting on X, CM Yogi framed the occasion in pointedly political terms: 'जिन्होंने केवल अपने परिवार के बारे में सोचा हो, उनसे यह उम्मीद करना कि वे गरीबों, दलितों और वंचितों के बारे में सोचेंगे, अपने आप में एक दिवास्वप्न है' — 'Expecting those who thought only of their own families to think of the poor, Dalits, and the deprived is itself a daydream.' He pegged the reference squarely to the period 'before 2017.' Along with the project launches, beneficiaries of various government schemes were handed welfare kits, and the Chief Minister extended Diwali greetings to all recipients and to the Van Tangiya community.

Who are the Van Tangiya — and why 2017 matters

The Van Tangiya (or Van Tangiya) are a Scheduled Tribe community concentrated in eastern Uttar Pradesh, historically employed in government forest-plantation labour — a form of livelihood that left them settled inside reserved forests with limited access to land rights, schools, roads, or civic infrastructure. For decades, their villages were officially invisible: not on revenue maps, not served by panchayat budgets, not covered by most welfare schemes.

After the BJP government came to power in UP in 2017, the state launched targeted initiatives to extend basic services and housing to these communities — a push that CM Yogi has repeatedly highlighted as a marker of changed governance priorities. Gorakhpur, the Chief Minister's home constituency and the seat of the Gorakhnath Math, has been a focal point of this drive.

₹82 crore, 52 projects — what Gorakhpur gets

Sunday's announcement bundles 52 schemes — a mix of inaugurations of completed works and foundation-stone layings for new ones — into a single Diwali-timed event. The total outlay of ₹82 crore-plus is intended to cover infrastructure and welfare measures directly serving Van Tangiya settlements in the Gorakhpur region. Beneficiary kits distributed on the day connect individual households to ongoing state welfare programmes.

The festival timing is deliberate and consistent with the administration's pattern of making welfare announcements on high-visibility Hindu occasions — anchoring development spending to cultural moments that resonate strongly in Purvanchal, the eastern UP belt that has historically lagged behind the state's western districts in infrastructure and income metrics.

A sharper political edge this Diwali

CM Yogi's post does more than announce projects — it draws a before-and-after line at 2017. The 'daydream' barb is an unmistakable swipe at preceding administrations, casting dynastic or family-first politics as the structural reason forest communities were left behind. It is a well-worn BJP frame in UP, but its deployment on Diwali — from Gorakhpur — gives it fresh amplification ahead of continued consolidation in the Purvanchal base.

Whether the 52 projects are executed on schedule and whether similar packages reach Van Tangiya settlements in other districts will be the real test of the promise embedded in Sunday's ceremony.