Varanasi: On Friday, Seeking a second time in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi filed his nomination papers from the Varanasi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, a day after holding a massive road show in the temple town. Scores of people turned out to cheer the Prime Minister. Before leaving for the collectorate to file his papers, seeking re-election from the Lok Sabha seat, the Prime Minister met NDA leaders at Collectorate office and also offered prayers at the Kaal Bhairav temple.
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On Thursday, the Prime Minister began his 7-km roadshow by garlanding the statue of Madan Mohan Malviya at the iconic Banaras Hindu University. In the last elections 2014, Modi won the seat by a margin of over three lakh votes against Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal. The nomination on April 26 will also see a show of strength with several BJP allies, including Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray and Janata Dal-United's Nitish Kumar, expected to accompany Modi when he files the papers.
Varanasi will go to polls in the last phase on May 19 while the counting of votes will be done on May 23. For the Prime Minister, the election in Varanasi is now believed to be easy as the Congress and the SP-BSP alliance has fielded light weight candidates. In the run up to the upcoming polls, the Congress has named Ajay Rai who had in 2014 contested against Modi and ended up at the third position. The alliance candidate Shalini Yadav is daughter of senior Congress leader Shyamlal Yadav and had lost the mayoral polls in Varanasi.