Varanasi: Narendra Modi Wins By 1.5 Lakh Votes (image: facebook.com/BJP4UP/)
Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi won from Varanasi constituency for third time in a row, it lost glamour in the face of resurgent Congress. PM Modi defeated Congress’ Ajai Rai with a margin of 1,52,513 votes.
The Prime Minister secured 6,12,970 votes and his nearest rival Ajai Rai bagged 4,60,457 votes. The polling for the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency was held in the last phase of General Elections on June 1.
A former three-time chief minister of Gujarat, PM Modi had contested in the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency for the first time in 2014. That year, he was also the BJP candidate for the Vadodara constituency. He had won both the constituencies in that general elections 2014, in which his party swept the elections with Uttar Pradesh itself contributing 71 seats.
PM Modi had a thumping majority of 371,784 in 2014, in which AAP national convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal came second. Congress” candidate, then Pindra MLA Ajai Rai came in a distant third.
Later, PM Modi chose to represent Varanasi and, in 2019 again, he won from the constituency. This time, PM Modi had increased his majority with over 1 lakh votes. This time as well, Modi contested against Congress’ Ajai Rai who repeated his performance of being in the third place. Samajwadi Party’s Shalini Yadav came second then.
A former RSS activist, Narendra Modi was flung into the electoral politics in 2002 as the Gujarat BJP government was marred in controversies and ultimately lost several byelections. Then the general secretary in charge of organisation of BJP, Modi replaced Keshubhai Patel as the chief minister of Gujarat and won a byelection in February from Rajkot II. He repeated his electoral victories for Assembly in 2007 and 2012 and was chosen as the chief minister.
A former student leader with ABVP, Ajai Rai is currently the state chief of Uttar Pradesh Congress. A former three-time BJP MLA, Rai has had an innings with Samajwadi Party in past.
The trends show that PM Modi’s BJP and its alliance NDA is at 290.
