Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat for a record third time defeating his rival, Ajay Rai of Congress by over 1.5 lakh votes.
PM Modi polled 6,12,970 votes, according to the Election Commission data. Bahujan Samaj Party's Ather Jamal Lari, finished third and remained nearly 5.8 lakh votes behind the Prime Minister. Ajay Rai -- who has contested and lost each of the past three general elections from Varanasi, claimed that his victory lay in the results.
In the first few hours of counting, Ajay Rai was leading from the constituency by over 6,000 votes. Soon after, Modi started to pick up and eventually raced past Rai. In 2019. the Prime Minister had won from Varanasi polling 674664 votes comprising 63.62% of the total number of votes polled. He had defeated Samajwadi Party candidate Shalini Yadav by a margin of 4,79,505 votes.
Modi is now the second Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to be elected three times in a row, fortifying the authority of the saffron party in Indian politics.
Varanasi, The Hottest seat
Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency in eastern Uttar Pradesh, came to the limelight after Prime Minister Modi, who hails from Gujarat, decided to fight the Lok Sabha polls from the seat in 2014. Modi won from Varanasi in 2014 when he became the Prime Minister for the first time and then again in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls after which he became the country's Prime Minister for a second time.
This time too BJP fielded PM Modi from Varanasi. The Congress has chosen Ajay Rai, the party's president for Uttar Pradesh to contest from the seat. This vital seat in Uttar Pradesh is set to witness a triangular fight between Prime Minister Modi, Ajay Rai and Athar Jamal Lari of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The other four candidates who managed to contest from Varanasi in the 2024 polls were Kolisetty Shiva Kumar of Yuga Thulasi Party, Gagan Prakash Yadav of Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), Dinesh Kumar Yadav (Independent) and Sanjay Kumar Tiwari (Independent).
In all, 41 candidates had initially filed their nomination papers, including comedian Shyam Rangeela. However, only seven nominations got the clearance. Varanasi has become a BJP stronghold since 1991. The saffron party has registered a win from this constituency seven times and lost it only once, in 2004, to Congress’s Rajesh Kumar Mishra. Before Prime Minister Modi picked this constituency to make his Lok Sabha debut, it was won by BJP stalwart Murli Manohar Joshi in 2009.
2024 polls: The total number of registered voters in the Varanasi constituency in 2024 polls was 19,97,578 and the seat saw a voting turnout of 56.49%. The seat went to polls in phase 7 on June 1, 2024.
In the 2019 LS Polls, Prime Minister Modi won from Varanasi polling 674664 votes comprising 63.62% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated Samajwadi Party candidate Shalini Yadav by a margin of 4,79,505 votes.
Modi had won from Varanasi in the 2014 polls too getting 581022 votes (56.37%) and defeating Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal by a margin of 371784 votes. Ajay Rai, who was fielded by the Congress in both 2014 and 2019 polls, stood third.
