Happy to vacate seat for Modi: Vadodara MP Balkrishna Shukla

Sitting BJP MP from the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat, Balkrishna Shukla today said he would be happy to vacate the seat in favour of Narendra Modi, if the party decides to field him from the constituency. “Modi is my political guru. He had encouraged me to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when I was still the city mayor. I am very happy to vacate my seat for him. I have already communicated my willingness to the party leadership,” Shukla said. [caption id=“attachment_1440711” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] AP[/caption] The MP expressed confidence that Modi would win the seat with a thumping majority. “It will be a proud moment for Vadodara to elect the prime ministerial candidate,” he said. Shukla had won the Vadodara seat with a margin of 1.32 lakh votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. He had replaced the three time seating BJP MP Jataben Thakkar after she had expressed her unwillingness to contest the parliamentary polls that year. According to Bharat Dangar, president of the city unit of BJP, party workers want Modi to contest from Vadodara. He said Modi’s candidature from the constituency would enthuse the entire cadre and voters across Gujarat, especially central Gujarat, as the Anand, Kheda and Dohad seats are currently held by the Congress. The BJP has already declared that Modi will contest elections from the temple town of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, replacing the sitting MP and senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who has been asked to contest from Kanpur. The Gujarat BJP had yesterday decided to recommend the name of veteran leader LK Advani to contest the Lok Sabha polls from his Gandhinagar constituency. The state party unit also said it would strongly recommend that Modi should also contest from his home turf, too, as it is the “wish and demand of people of Gujarat as well as party workers.” The final decision about Modi and Advani’s seats in Gujarat will be taken by the Central Election Committee during its meeting to be held today in Delhi. PTI