Choosing to retain his Varanasi seat in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi quit his Vadodara lok Sabha seat on Thursday.
“I will represent Varanasi in lok Sabha and I look forward to this wonderful opportunity to serve Ganga Maa and work for Varanasi’s development,” Modi tweeted, after giving up his Vadodara seat.Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was also elected from two seats in Uttar Pradesh gave up his- pocket-borough Mainpuri and retained Azamgarh.
Under rules, a member who has been elected from two lok Sabha constituencies has to vacate one of the seats within 14 days of the declaration of result. With lok Sabha results out on May 16, the deadline was to expire on Thursday.
Parliament sources said the resignation of the two leaders had been received and was under process. The lok Sabha Speaker will process the resignations and after acceptance the vacancies will be intimated to the Election Commission so that bye elections can be held.
With Modi giving up his Vadodara seat, speculation is rife on who in BJP will contest from the constituency in his home state even as the name of his close aide Amit Shah is doing the rounds. Incidentally, Shah's name is also doing the rounds for the Defence Ministry of which Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has the additional charge.
Modi had won Vadodara with a near record margin of 5.7 lakh, which was the biggest in this lok Sabha polls. BJP won all the 26 seats in Gujarat.
Modi had expressed his gratitude to the people of Vadodara for the huge win. "After filing my nomination, I could spend only 50 minutes with you but you gave me victory by 5.70 lakh margin. I have checked up and found that only P V Narasimha Rao had won by such a big margin and that was in a bye election. Mine has been recorded in a general election," he had said.
In Varanasi, Modi had defeated his nearest rival AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal by more than 3.7 lakh votes.Modi retaining Varanasi has come along expected lines with the BJP having swept the Hindi heartland by winning 71 of the total 80 seats from UP. Kejriwal had expressed apprehensions about Modi quitting Varanasi post-polls and had made it one of his campaign issues.
Modi had announced he will make Varanasi the spiritual capital of India and taking up the cleanliness of River Ganga, for which he has already initiated steps by creating a separate department exclusively dedicated for the purpose under Uma Bharti.Politically, Modi’s continued Varanasi connection will help the BJP maintain the momentum in the key State where it has seen a resurgence after decades and its cadre mobilised.