There was a time, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has declared, when Uttar Pradesh was run by mafias — and today, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is amplifying that claim, citing Shah's words as a definitive verdict on nearly a decade of BJP governance in India's most populous state.

Posting on Friday, 25 September 2026, CM Yogi quoted Amit Shah directly: 'एक जमाने में यूपी में माफियाओं का शासन चलता था। आज यूपी भर में माफियाओं को समाप्त करने का काम भारतीय जनता पार्टी की योगी सरकार ने किया है' — 'There was a time when mafias ran Uttar Pradesh. Today, it is the BJP's Yogi government that has done the work of eliminating mafias across UP.'

The anti-mafia plank that has defined UP politics since 2017

When Yogi Adityanath took office in 2017, dismantling entrenched criminal networks became the signature promise of his administration. The state government deployed a combination of police encounters, property demolitions, and invocations of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act (UPCOCA) to target gang operations that had long operated with perceived impunity across the state.

The strategy became a defining political identity for the BJP in the Hindi heartland — framing law enforcement not merely as governance, but as a moral reclamation of the state from organised crime. Shah's statement, as quoted by Yogi, is the clearest articulation of that narrative: a before-and-after contrast designed to draw a bright line between the pre-2017 era and the present.

Shah's authority as the framing makes this more than a routine post

The choice to quote Amit Shah — Union Minister of Home Affairs and the architect of much of the BJP's internal-security strategy — lends the statement a weight beyond a routine self-assessment. Shah has long coordinated with state governments on organised crime, and his endorsement of Uttar Pradesh's record frames the crackdown as a jointly owned achievement of both state and central leadership.

For UP's BJP government, the political logic is straightforward: with Shah as the source, the anti-mafia narrative carries the imprimatur of New Delhi, reinforcing the party's core governance argument ahead of any future electoral cycle.

A narrative battle over UP's law-and-order legacy

The 'mafia raj' framing has always been as much about political contrast as about policing statistics. BJP leaders have consistently positioned the post-2017 era against a prior period they characterise as lawlessness — a contrast that opposition parties dispute. What is clear is that the anti-organised-crime campaign has remained a live, high-frequency theme in UP political communication throughout Yogi Adityanath's tenure.

If the broader pattern holds, statements like this often precede fresh announcements — central-state coordination meetings on internal security, new legislative steps under UPCOCA, or operational updates. The amplification of Shah's words by the Chief Minister signals the issue is very much on the front burner.