By Tajdar H. Zaidi
Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi filed his nomination papers from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat on May 14. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and four mandated proposers accompanied PM Modi.
Varanasi, the seat that PM Modi has won twice, will go to polls in the final phase of the General Elections on June 1.
Modi is the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha Polls.
Modi will contest against Uttar Pradesh Congress Chief Ajai Rai and Bahujan Samajwadi Party’s (BSP) Athar Ali Lari. In the 2019 poll, Modi won the seat by nearly 4.8 lakh votes, a big jump from the 3.72 lakh winning margin in 2014.
Comedian Shyam Rangeela, known for his videos of mimicking Prime Minister Modi, has also said he will contest the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 against the Prime Minister from the Varanasi seat. Rangeela has, however, not filed his nomination for the seat yet.
Earlier in the day, en route to filing his papers, Modi prayed at Varanasi’s iconic Dashashwamedh Ghat on the banks of the Ganges. He also visited visited the Kaal Bhairav Temple.
“My relationship with my Kashi is amazing, inseparable, and incomparable. All I can say is it cannot be expressed in words!” Modi said in a post on X before visiting the Kaal Bhairav Temple.
PM Modi’s Four Proposers: The BJP has won Varanasi eight times since 1991, with only RK Mishra of the Congress winning the seat in 2004. Varanasi will vote in the seventh and final phase of this Lok Sabha 2024 election on June 1.
The other leaders from BJP and its allies who attended Modi’s nomination filing were Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav. RLD Chief Jayant Chaudhary, LJP leader Chirag Paswan