The battle for Varanasi Parliamentary which already turned out to be most interesting contest in the country after Bharatiya Janta Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi announced his candidature but now this holy city is going to set a unique record of having almost all the prominent candidates as members of some or the other legislative Assemblies with two of the contestants also enjoying status of being a sitting chief minister and a former chief minister.
Narendra Modi, the most favourate of all the contestants in the field for Varanasi Parliamentary seat is not just a member of Gujrat State Assembly but he is also chief minister. His candidature also holds significance for this Holy city as the BJP’s announced him as it’s prime ministerial candidate and if the Party and it’s allies get majority than Varanasi would add it’s name to eight other lok Sabha constituencies of the State which holds the tag of (VVIP Constituency) for sending a prime minister candidate to the Parliament.
Another most interesting candidate who vowed to defeat the BJP’s candidate at any cost is chief of Aam Adami Party (AAP), Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal, like Modi represents the State Assembly of national capital and is having a tag of former chief minister. Amongst other candidates from Varanasi, it is Kejriwal who leads the attack on Narendra Modi not just by holding road-shows in Varanasi, but first by going to Gujrat and trying to directly seek answers to his query on highly projected `Gujrat Model’ of BJP and later putting the same questions before Modi in Varanasi, highlighting that how the picture in Gujrat is in sharp contrast to what projected by NaMO in his campaign.
Samajwadi Party candidate for Varanasi Parliament constituency, Kailash Chaurasiya too is a sitting MlA of the State Assembly and is a minister of state for women and child welfare (independent charge) in Akhilesh Yadav’s government. He tried to bring interest in the battle by resigning from the state cabinet and challenging Gujrat chief minister to do the same so an equal fight on the field can be ensured at Varanasi. He even reportedly cited the example of another candidate,Arvind Kejriwal saying that he too had resigned from Delhi’s chief minister’s post so if Modi is so confident and is making tall claims of his `wave’ sweeping the entire country than he must resigned and win from Varanasi before taking any constitutional post. It may be mentioned here that Akhilesh yet not accepted Chaurasiya’s resignation.
Congress Party which announced candidate after going through series of high level discussions in the name of fielding one of the toughest candidate in Varanasi to defeat Narendra Modi out of Gujrat, too bring in a MlA, Ajay Rai to take on Modi. Another prominent candidate who could not be write-off is Quami Ekta Dal’s candidate Mokhtar Ansari, a mafia-don turned politician. Ansari, who is also a sitting MlA gave very tough fight to BJP veteran face Murli Manohar Joshi, in Parliament election in Varanasi last time. Joshi some how saved his prestige by defeating Ansari just by a very thin margin of 17,000 votes. This time Joshi has been shifted to Kanpur just to accomodate Narendra Modi. It is only Bahujan Samaj Party, which refused to make Varanasi a high profile battle, and thus fielded a lesser known face, Rajesh Jaiswal, in the field.