Varanasi is one of the Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. The seat has been represented by the Prime Minister of India Mr Narendra Modi since 2014. It’s not the case that this seat came into prominence in 2014. This seat has multiple political inputs. This seat caters to the entire eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar. Culturally this place Varanasi is the centre for these regions. Even in 1989 late V P Singh selected it as his political centre point.
In 2014 the seat chosen by Mr Narendra Modi was a risky and doughty step by Mr Modi. In the 2014 LS poll Narendra Modi contested from two seats of Varanasi and Vadodara. After winning from both the seats in 2014 Modi resigned from Vadodara in favour of Varanasi. In the 2009 LS election on Varanasi LS seat senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi defeated dreaded gangster Mukhtar Ansari by a narrow margin of 17211 votes.
In the 2012 UP Assembly election the performance of the BJP on the Assembly seats of this Lok Sabha was pitiable. On five Assembly seats the BJP got merely 168446 votes. In the 2012 Assembly election on two ACs of this Lok Sabha Rohaniya and Sevapuri the BJP forfeit even its deposit. The BJP got only 19 percent of the polled vote in 2012 Assembly election on the five ACs of Varanasi LS seat.
In spite of such pitiable performance in 2012 Narendra Modi got 56.37 percent of vote in 2014 LS election. In the number of votes the BJP got 581022 votes in 2014 LS poll which is nearly 3.5 times of the 2012 Assembly poll vote share on these seats. In percent terms too the BJP got nearly 3 times vote in 2014 with respect to 2012 Assembly poll on the ACs of Varanasi LS seat.
In the 2017 Assembly poll on the five ACs of Varanasi LS seat the vote share of the BJP and its ally the Apna Dal(S) was 564494 which is again nearly 3.25 times than the vote share of 2012 Assembly poll on the ACs. The BJP contested 4 seats in the 2017 Assembly poll while one seat Sevapuri was contested by BJP ally the AD(S). In the 2017 Assembly poll on these 5 ACs the BJP/AD(S) vote share was 52.53 percent.
In the 2019 LS election Narendra Modi contested from only one seat of Varanasi. In the 2019 LS election Narendra Modi improved his vote share in percent and in total too. The BJP vote share in the 2019 LS poll was 63.62 percent which was an improvement of nearly 8 percent with respect to its 2014 LS poll performance. The BJP got nearly one lakh more votes in 2019 with respect to its 2014 vote tally.
The opposition is confused about the Varanasi seat a lot. In the 2019 LS poll the Samajwadi Party and the Congress party contested separately and SP candidate Shalini Yadav got nearly 50000 more votes than the Congress party. As per negotiation this time under seat sharing arrangement the SP should contest the seat. But sensing the verdict of this seat the SP has given this seat to the Congress party. This makes clear that the opposition alliance has neither vision nor any hope on this seat.
The Samajwadi Party allotted all tough seats to the Congress party under seat negotiation. It’s even tough for the Congress party to become runner and save its deposit on nearly all seats. The opposition is only putting up a token fight against the BJP/NDA in UP and even in the entire country.
In 2014 LS poll Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP had put his candidature from Varanasi LS seat only to gain prominence in entire country. In 2019 he even didn’t dare to put candidate from the seat. In the 2022 UP Assembly poll the BJP/NDA further improved its vote tally and got more than 6 lakh votes on the five ACs of Varanasi LS seat.
While in Wayanad the Congress party/United Democratic Front has lost its vote share from the 2019 LS election to 2021 Assembly election. In the 2019 LS poll Rahul Gandhi got 705034 votes which was 64.81 % of the polled votes. In the 2021 assembly poll the INC/UDF vote came down to 521825 which is 27 % less than the INC LS vote tally on the 7ACs falling within Wayanand LS seat. This is the popularity test of Rahul Gandhi.
