A potpourri of contestants to fight Narendra Modi in Varanasi: Ex-judge, former jawan, a Kashi high priest, and a PM lookalike

In the key electoral battles lined up this poll season, Prime Minister Narendra Modi certainly wins the title of leading the most interesting one. In fray is the most eclectic array of candidates – from a sacked BSF jawan, to 111 protesting farmers, to PM’s lookalike, who claimed they will contest against Modi from Varanasi, which goes to poll in the last phase, on 19 May. At the top of the list is, Tej Bahadur Yadav, a sacked Border Security Force (BSF) constable, because being the Uttar Pradesh gathbandhan candidate, his candidature is expected to be taken most seriously. He will also have the army of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party cadres to campaign for him, at least in theory. Yadav was last in news for kicking up a storm by alleging on social media that the senior officials illegally sold off the food supplies meant for the troopers and were serving substandard meal to the jawans. [caption id=“attachment_6520481” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a mega roadshow in Varanasi on Thursday. Twitter@Narendra Modi[/caption] He was later removed from service. He alleged that he was persecuted by the forces for exposing the corruption and had even requested Prime Minister Modi to intervene. However, upset over lack of support, Yadav announced his candidature in March 2019, stating that to contest the elections to eliminate corruption in the armed forces. “I had raised the issue of corruption but I was sacked. My first objective will be to strengthen and eliminate corruption in the forces,” he said. On Monday, he was officially fielded as the SP-BSP-RLD alliance candidate to take on Modi. Apart from Yadav, former Madras High Court judge, Justice CS Karnan who was the first sitting judge to have been sentenced to prison, also said he will contest elections against Modi from Varanasi. He also contested from Chennai. Karnan had said that his focus would be to expose corruption in the government and the judiciary. In May 2018, Justice Karnan had launched a political party, ‘Anti Corruption Dynamic Party’. In May 2017, the Supreme Court had convicted him of contempt for accusing top court judges of corruption, but the former HC judge has maintained that he was being targeted for being a Dalit. A group of 111 farmers from Tamil Nadu and fluorosis victim Ansala Swamy are also among those set to take on Modi in Varanasi Speaking to PTI, the farmers’ leader P Ayyakannu, who spearheaded agitations in Delhi in 2017 for over 100 days, said the “moment they assure in their manifesto that our demands will be fulfilled, we will drop our decision to contest against Modi”. In the event of that not happening, he said they would go ahead and contest against Modi. Asked why they were raising the demand with BJP alone and not other parties like the Congress to include it in their manifestos, he said the BJP was still the ruling party and Modi the Prime Minister. The same group had staged protests in Delhi outside the Parliament in 2017. Then there are others, too, like the victims of fluorosis from Nalgonda (Telangana) and Prakasam (Andhra Pradesh), led by activists Vadde Srinivas and Jalagam Sudheer. Fluoride contamination of groundwater is a serious issue in the two states and their aim is to talk about it from a place that will be in focus. “We want both Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi to realise how important it is to tackle the problems of fluorosis. Other parts of the country are also affected but our primary aim is to get focus on to the problem in the Telugu states,” Srinivas told The Times of India. Apart from these people, Vishwambhar Nath Mishra a professor at the department of electronics engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University, and one of the foremost critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Namami Gange’ project had also announced he will contest against Modi. Mishra, who is also the mahant, or high priest, of Varanasi’s famous Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple, told _ Business Standards, “_Varanasi needs a ‘resident’ MP, someone who lives here, who is approachable. I don’t understand what we get by proclaiming that the PM is our MP. Such a person would visit rarely, would execute his mann ki baat, and is sure to be unapproachable.” Mishra also said that the development work undertaken during Modi’s tenure was missing the essence of Benaras, a city he claims has a living, thriving ethnic culture of its own. “In the last five years, in the name of building a corridor, this history, several temples and labyrinthine galis erased and occupants relocated in the name of rehabilitation. Why would people visit Banaras when it becomes another version of a Gurgaon, or any other big city?,” Mishra alleges. Abhinandan Pathak, Modi’s lookalike who used to campaign for the BJP, is another person who has said that he will file his nomination from Varanasi as an Independent candidate, adding that he will support Congress president Rahul Gandhi if he wins. Pathak is known for mimicking the prime minister’s style, targeting him over his promises of “achche din” and depositing Rs 15 lakh in the bank accounts of every Indian. “Since I look like Modiji, people will always ask me where are the ‘acche din’ (good days), as promised by Modiji ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Hurt by seeing problems of the common man, I left the BJP’s ally to join Congress last month,” NDTV quoted him as saying. Pathak had earlier participated in door-to-door canvassing for the BJP during the Gorakhpur bypoll which the party eventually lost. He was also a member of BJP ally, Republican Party of India (Athawale), which he quit last year. It was not immediately clear that how many of these have managed to file their papers on or before Monday, the last day of filing nomination from Varanasi. However, what is evident from the profile and vision of these candidates is that they are highly individualistic disgruntled voices, clubbed together in the cacophony of election-time campaigning. Perhaps, by contesting from a high-profile constituency against the prime minister himself, these people hope that their sidelined yet pertinent issues might take centre stage.