Modi, Yogi clout at stake in final round

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Lucknow: The seventh and last round of polling for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh on May 19 will see voting in 13 seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi, former constituency of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, two erstwhile bastions of the CPI and some most volatile regions where caste and muscle power have held sway over politics.
These seats are Gorakhpur, Mahrajganj, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Salempur, Varanasi, Ghosi, Chandauli, Gazipur, Ballia, Mirzapur and Robertsganj, and the stakes are particularly high for the BJP since all these seats had been won by the party in 2014.
For Yogi Adityanath, this round is the most crucial since it involves Gorakhpur, the seat which was represented by him five times since 1998 till 2014 and by Mahant Avaidyanath from 1989 to 1996, but was lost to Samajwadi Party in the by-election held in 2018 after he became the CM. It was a big embarrassment for the BJP and more so for Yogi, since he could not manage a win for the party’s candidate despite his strong hold over the region.
It was alleged in some quarters within the party that the seat was lost because Yogi himself did not show much interest in the by-election, even though the opposition SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had put up a joint candidate.
To make up for the loss, Yogi is scheduled to address more than a dozen election meetings in the region till May 17, when campaigning ends for 13 seats in eastern UP. He is also scheduled to stay in Gorakhpur till May 19 and also address party workers’ meetings every day. He has been staying at the Gorakhnath Math to direct the party campaign in the area.

Gorakhpur and Phulpur, however, were the two seats which the BJP had lost to the SP-BSP alliance in the by-elections held in 2018 after Yogi and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya vacated them. While Gorakhpur was won by Praveen Nishad of the NISHAD Party who contested on the SP symbol, Phulpur was won by Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel who fought as an SP candidate.
It is a prestigious battle for Yogi since his sway over the area, his long association with the Gorakhnath temple, and his dominance through the Hindu Yuva Vahini which he headed for years are on test. The BJP has put up popular Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan from Gorakhpur, but it was after the party neutralised the giant-killer Praveen Nishad – he joined the BJP in March and has been put up as a BJP candidate from Sant Kabirnagar.
Even though Ravi Kishan, a Brahmin, is an outsider for Gorakhpur, he had been chosen because of his appeal in the Bhojpuri-speaking area in the region, and also because of the sizeable Brahmin population in Gorakhpur. Interestingly, Praveen Nishad too is campaigning for the BJP in Gorakhpur after polling in Sant Kabirnagar was held on May 12. He is expected to bring back the Nishad community towards the BJP, while Yogi himself would activate the Hindu Yuva Vahini to put all its efforts to ensure the BJP candidate’s victory.

Others in the fray in Gorakhpur are SP's Ram Bhual Nishad and Madhusudan Tripathi from the Congress.
Among other seats, Maharajganj is witnessing an interesting triangular contest with Supriya Shrinate, a well-known former TV journalist, pitted against the sitting MP Pankaj Chaudhary of the BJP and Akhilesh Singh of the SP. She is the daughter of Harsh Vardhan, two-time Congress MP from Maharajganj. She had quit her job in March to join the Congress. She was in the limelight for releasing a local manifesto for Maharajganj.
Ghazipur and Ballia are among those seats from where the Communist Party of India (CPI) has won in the past. Ghazipur elected CPI candidate Sarju Pandey in 1967, 1971 and Vishwanath Shastri in 1991. Union Minister Manoj Sinha was the first BJP candidate to win from here in 1996, and also won in 1999 and 2014. This time, he is challenged by the united SP-BSP candidate Afzal Ansari, brother of jailed muscleman Mukhtar Ansari.

In Ballia, Sarju Pandey of the CPI had won in 1957 and 1962 when the seat was known as Rasra. Late former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar represented this seat from 1977 to 2004 (except in 1984), while his son won it in 2007 (by-election) and in 2009. The BJP won it for the first time in 2014 when Bharat Singh recorded a victory. This year the BJP has fielded Virendra Singh Mast, president of BJP's Kisan Morcha, and sitting MP from Bhadohi. It is a calculated risk since Mast is an outsider but strong at the grassroots level. Interestingly, the nomination papers of the Congress supported candidate Amarjet Yadav had been rejected after scrutiny, thus there will be a straight contest between the BJP and the SP candidate Sanatan Pandey.

The adjoining Salempur seat, too, has never been won by the BJP except in 2014. The seat has been with the Congress in most of the elections, and later went into the hands of the SP and BSP. There will be a fight between two Kushwaha leaders here, as the sitting MP Ravindra Kushwaha has been fielded by the BJP again, and he faces RS Kushwaha, the state president of the BSP. However, the contest has become triangular with the Congress fielding Rajesh Mishra, former MP from Varanasi.
Varanasi is witnessing a watered-down contest with Prime Minister Narendra Modi being challenged by Shalini Yadav of the SP and Ajay Rai of the Congress. The absence of common challenger and the rejection of nomination papers of sacked BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav have taken the punch out of the contest. Modi’s victory margin will perhaps be the only matter of interest there.
Robertsganj and Mirzapur seats are being contested by Apna Dal (Anupriya Patel faction), with Union Minister Anupriya Patel herself contesting from Mirzapur and PL Kol from Robertsganj. Other notable figures in this round are former Union minister RPN Singh (Congress) from Kushinagar and state BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli.
