The journey from UP to the prime ministerial chair began with Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who was Member of Parliament (MP) from Allahabad Dist (East)-cum-Jaunpur Dist (West) (now Phulpur).

He was followed by Lal Bahadur Shastri, an MP from Allahabad (now Prayagraj), and Indira Gandhi, the Lok Sabha MP from Rae Bareli who was prior to that a Rajya Sabha MP from UP. The list doesn't end here - Charan Singh from Baghpat, Rajiv Gandhi from Amethi, V P Singh from Fatehpur, Chandra Shekhar from Ballia, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Lucknow, all went on to become PMs. In all probability, if Narayan Dutt Tiwari had won the 1991 election from Nainital (which was in UP at the time), he, and not P V Narasimha Rao, would have become the PM in 1991.

It is often said, "kendra ki sarkar ka raasta UP se hokar guzarata hai" - the road to the central government passes through UP. Except Gulzarilal Nanda, Morarji Desai, Narasimha Rao, H D Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, and Dr Manmohan Singh, the other nine Prime Ministers of India have been either residents of UP or were elected from UP.

On September 13, 2013, Modi was declared as the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. Clearing all doubts, the BJP announced that Modi would contest from two seats - Varanasi in UP and Vadodara in Gujarat. When he won from both, he retained the former and resigned from the latter. The BJP won 71 (+2 with its ally Apna Dal (S)) of the 80 seats in UP, and Modi became prime minister.

The political importance of UP becomes clear when we look at the performance of various parties in Lok Sabha elections, and the role of those parties in national politics.

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