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| UP Election 2017: Amid Campaign, PM |
| UP Election 2017: Amid Campaign, PM Narendra Modi Has A Message Waiting...From Varanasi
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| INDIA
, 27-February-2017
5:20:59 AM |
| As the battle for UP is underway, PM Narendra Modi has invoked Lord Krishna to explain his involvement with the state, "Krishna," he said "was born in UP but made Gujarat his karma bhoomi. I was born in Gujarat but UP has adopted me". And in UP it is Varanasi, his parliamentary seat, that he has made his political home. For the BJP, losing Assembly seats in Varanasi would be a major loss of face. Varanasi polls in the final phase on March 8.
For over five decades, SP Singh, a Banarsi businessman now in his seventies, spends his evenings with chai and gossip on Dasashwamedh, arguably the most photographed ghat in the world. In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Mr Singh, who is from an old Congressi family, had voted for Narendra Modi. "People of Benares may have been swept up by the Modi wave then, but voh ulti ganga bhee bahana jaantey hai (they know how to make the Ganga flow backwards).' Singh uses this idiomatic expression; which originates in the river's behaviour in Benares, where it reverses its natural direction of flow, to indicate that the BJP could be in for trouble in its own bastion.
Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantonment and Varanasi North are the assembly segments that form what people here call 'Modi's Garh.' All three are giving the BJP trouble. "They know there's trouble, why else do you think (BJP president) Amit Shah would come and camp here,' says Vinay Tripathi, a local.
For the BJP, nowhere is trouble greater than in the prestigious Varanasi South seat. Within its ambit lies much of what is quintessentially Benares - the lanes of Kashi Vishwanath, the temple, the mosque, Gowdhulia chowk, 41 ghats, the Banarsi sari weaver mohallas. A shopkeeper in Gowdhulia says, 'Agar desh mein Modi lehar thee, toh yaha Dada lehar hotee hai' (If there is a Modi wave in the country, here we have a Dada wave.' Dada is BJP's Shyamdeo Rai Chowdhury, who has won this seat in seven consecutive Assembly elections. He was denied ticket this time,
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