GHAZIABAD: “I have no political agenda,” says Yogender Pal Singh, or simply ‘Yogi’, of his application to adopt Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his son.Yes, that’s right. The 79-year-old Modinagar resident, who lives in Patla village with his septuagenarian wife, Atar Kali, filed adoption papers at the office of the deputy registrar of Ghaziabad. This was on February 21. The application was promptly rejected, and Yogi says he is “hurt”.Yogi had decided to take this step in response to a member of the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights issuing a notice to the PM for his remarks that he is an adopted son of UP and asking him to furnish legal documents about his adoption in the state.Modi had called himself an adopted son of UP in a rally in Hardoi on February 17. “I was born in Gujarat and UP has adopted me... Uttar Pradesh is my mai baap. I am not the son who will betray his mai baap. You have adopted me and it is my duty to work for you,” Modi had said at the rally.Following the speech, a member of the UP’s child rights panel, Nahid Lari Khan , issued the notice to the PM. “He (Modi) was snubbed by the child protection agency of UP, which hurt me immensely. So I came forward with my wife to adopt him. Modi has himself adopted a village in UP. He has asked his MPs from the state to adopt a village each and work for its development. No one questioned him on legal grounds at that point of time,” Yogi told TOI at his house around 15km from NH-58 in Ghaziabad.Yogi, a Jat, used to be a close confidant of former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh . He now spends his time in the village after retiring from active politics. He has three sons — Ajit, Ajay and Arun — who are employed in various medium-level jobs. His only daughter, Manju, is married to Raja Verma, who is the president of the UP state unit of BJP’s Kisan Morcha. Verma is also the younger brother of BJP member and Ghaziabad mayor Ashu Verma.Yogi himself had a long political career behind him where he worked in close association with Chaudhary Charan Singh. He holds a post-graduate degree in political science from NAS College in Meerut. He was jailed for 19 months during the Emergency when he was district president of the Lok Dal. Later, he became district president of the Janata Party in Ghaziabad after Emergency was lifted. In 1980, he had contested the assembly elections from Muradnagar on a ticket offered by Dalit Mazdoor Kisan Party headed by Chaudhary Charan Singh. But he lost the election by 4,500 votes.He was actively involved in the Bijli Andolan and Gur Andolan of UP in the ’60s besides leading associations of cane cultivators in western UP. From 1992 to 2002, Yogi was chairman of the local municipal body of Patla after which he retired from politics.