Narendra Modi may have chosen silent meditation in the run-up to the last phase of the general election, but his party kicked up a din in his parliamentary constituency.
A BJP procession of mini-trucks carrying tableaus — actors playing gods and goddesses, and idols — crisscrossed Varanasi City on Wednesday evening, accompanied by party workers and brass bands that kept children awake till 10.30 at night.
Some voters told this newspaper the four-hour, high-octane campaign blitz — coming in the hours before the campaign-end deadline of 5pm on Thursday — appeared to betray nervousness on the part of a man who claims God sent him to do His work.
While the BJP did not officially call the tableaux a part of Modi’s campaign, the marchers carried party flags and some of the trucks had the Prime Minister’s posters stuck on them. Besides, neither Wednesday nor Thursday marked any significant religious occasion.
Yet, about a dozen senior BJP leaders descended on Varanasi on Thursday to pray at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
Among them were Union home minister Amit Shah and Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Shah waved to the devotees and shook hands with a few. Fadnavis also prayed at the Kal Bhairav temple.
Through the day, BJP workers went door to door and handed first-time voters a letter from Modi that urged them to vote on June 1.
“We are not campaigning for Modiji’s victory; we are campaigning to ensure his victory margin is 10 lakh and that we get 400-plus seats across the country,” Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said.
Varanasi has 19.97 lakh voters. The current national record is held by C.R. Paatil of the BJP, who won by 6.89 lakh votes from Navsari, Gujarat, in 2019.
Ranjit Mishra, an unemployed youth in Varanasi, scoffed at Maurya’s boast.
“It can only be a joke. How can someone win by 10 lakh votes when only 50-60 per cent of Varanasi’s less than 20 lakh voters may turn up at the polling booths with the temperatures touching 47 degrees,” he said.
“Parading actors in the garb of gods and goddesses amid loud music in the night, when many people sleep, shows poor taste and also a lack of true devotion,” he added.
A middle-aged man selling coconut water in the neighbourhood of the BJP office in Mahmoorganj too dismissed the BJP’s feverish campaign, also marked by light-and-sound shows in the sky by 1,000 drones in mid-May.
“Modi may win from here but I am not going to vote for him this time because of his failures,” he said, declining to be named.
Ajay Rai, INDIA nominee from the Congress, too walked across the city with party workers, stopping briefly at more than a dozen temples between Bhainsasur Ghat and Dashaswamedh Ghat to bow and say a short prayer. He shook hands with people and requested them to make sure they voted on Saturday.
Rai slammed the BJP for the “nautanki (theatrics) going on across the country in general and Varanasi in particular”.
He said Modi’s scheduled 48-hour meditation on the Vivekananda Rock in Kanyakumari, from Thursday evening till the end of voting, was a ply to campaign after the deadline.
“The Election Commission should take note that Modi plans to campaign through the media in the name of religion even after the campaign deadline,” he said. “It shows his insecurity, fuelled by his failures as Prime Minister and local MP.”
Modi last campaigned in Varanasi on May 21 and 22.
“There was a plan for him to arrive here on Wednesday evening and campaign in the night as well as during the day on Thursday. But he changed his plan because he wanted to do something extraordinary,” a senior BJP leader in Varanasi said, alluding to the Prime Minister’s decision to meditate on the Vivekananda Rock.
Varanasi votes on June 1
