Did Mayawati stop Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from contesting the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat?

It seems that Priyanka was keen to take on Narendra Modi in Varanasi but she wanted to be a consensus candidate of the Congress and SP-BSP gathbandhan. In backroom negotiations, Mayawati is believed to have put her foot down on the proposal.

While she had readily left the Gandhi family bastions of Rae Bareli and Amethi for Sonia and Rahul respectively, she was not willing to give up a gathbandhan seat for a third member of the family. Her reservations were political rather than personal.

Actually, she shares a good relationship with Priyanka. But she was acutely aware that Priyanka’s candidature from Varanasi could be the first step towards a Congress revival in time for the 2022 assembly election in UP. The sentiment in Varanasi was that although Modi would win the Lok Sabha election comfortably, Priyanka’s presence in eastern UP could galvanise Brahmin support for the Congress in the future.

Mayawati feared that a movement of Brahmins towards the Congress could spark off interest among Jatavs and Muslims. Both communities were Congress voters during Indira Gandhi’s time. Priyanka’s constant references to her grandmother rang alarm bells for Mayawati and she decided to nip the Congress party’s 2022 plans in the bud.

Akhilesh Yadav was more open to the idea of Priyanka contesting, which is why he delayed announcing a gathbandhan nominee for Varanasi. The constituency was allotted to the SP in the seat sharing arrangement with BSP. Finally, when Akhilesh realised that Mayawati was adamant, he hurriedly named Shalini Yadav, a complete lightweight, as the SP candidate. In fact, his subsequent moves show the confusion prevalent in his camp.

Shalini Yadav filed her papers but just before nominations closed on April 29, Akhilesh rushed sacked BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav to also file his papers as an SP candidate. The returning officer in Varanasi was faced with a dilemma. Two SP nominees for Varanasi? Eventually, he rejected Tej Yadav’s papers, leaving Shalini Yadav as Akhilesh’s candidate.

Like Rajnath Singh in Lucknow, Modi has a very easy ride to victory.

Speed bumps in Varanasi

No-one has any doubt that Narendra Modi will sweep in Varanasi. But that hasn’t stopped all kinds of people from trying to put obstacles in the PM’s path. When nominations closed on April 29, as many as 101 people had filed papers to contest against Modi.

These included 95 turmeric farmers from Telengana and Tamil Nadu who wanted to use the Varanasi contest as a ruse to draw attention to their plight. Another unusual candidate surfaced in Varanasi, Bhagwan Vedantacharya of the ultra-rightwing Ram Rajya Parishad.

The Parishad used to be politically active immediately after Independence but dropped off the electoral map after 1962. In 1952, it managed to win as many as three seats. Its seat tally reduced to two in 1962. After that the Parishad confined itself to religious and social activities. Interestingly, the Parishad grabbed headlines when it fielded a candidate against Jawaharlal Nehru from Phulpur in 1952, saffron-robed Swami Prabhudutt Brahmachari.

The swami had taken a vow of silence so he campaigned with a troupe of singers who sang devotional songs asking for votes for him. Needless to say, Nehru trounced the swami by a huge margin. The re-surfacing of the Parishad in the current election came as a surprise for the BJP which was not expecting a challenge from a swami.

Bhagwan Vedantacharya’s papers were rejected by the returning office, which sparked off a huge protest from the Parishad. When last heard, Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, disciple of Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati and Shankarachrya designate of the Jyotish peeth, were on dharna in Varanasi demanding reinstatement of the Parishad’s nominee.

The returning officer has rejected papers of most of the 100 odd nominees, including the bulk of the farmers who came all the way from the south to challenge Modi in his Varanasi bastion. Now, 30 candidates are left in the fray, including the PM.

Signs of anxiety?

BJP circles are wondering why the union home ministry has suddenly issued a notice to Rahul Gandhi on his citizenship after the fourth phase of polling. The buzz is that the party is worried that its performance in this crucial phase in which the NDA had won 56 of the 71 seats that polled, was not up to expectations, particularly in Maharashtra.

And it wants to divert attention by picking on Rahul Gandhi. The controversy over Rahul’s citizenship is quite an old saga so it made little sense to revive it at this stage when the 2019 polls are almost 70 per cent complete.

A complaint was filed with Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan by BJP MP Mahesh Girri in 2015. Mahajan sent it to the Ethics Committee of which BJP patriarch L K Advani was chairperson. Advani did not take the complaint forward and the matter was forgotten.

Then, in 2017, Subramanium Swamy filed a similar complaint with the union home ministry. The ministry too did nothing. Suddenly, two years later, it dusted off the complaint and shot off a notice to Rahul. BJP circles are wondering whether the government is serious about the matter or whether the notice is sign of anxiety about the party’s poll performance so far.