Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh): Elections in India often bring out the queerest side of politicians in the fray. Living up to this tradition, this Lok Sabha polls, Rajan Yadav, an Independent candidate from Uttar Pradesh decided to file his nomination from Varanasi seated on a bier, as four people carried it on their shoulders while taking out a funeral procession.
Yadav, who is also known as "Arthi Baba" said that the bier in which he traveled to the district headquarters to file his nomination from Varanasi Parliamentary Constituency represents the death of Indian democracy at the hands of the Bharatiya Janta Party-led central government.
"This bier represents the death of India's democracy, corruption and the corrupt, which is why I chose to travel by bier to file my nomination. I felt that its the need of the hour to defeat Modi who is the enemy of the poor."
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Hailing from Gorakhpur, Yadav has also decided to set up his election workplace at the Harishchandra Ghat, which serves as a major cremation destination in Varanasi. He intends to perform the last rites of all the "dead" government policies and schemes along the ghat and formulate new ones.
"I will set up my election office on the cremation ground, and operate from that office," said Yadav.
Yadav aka Arthi Baba is taking on Modi in Varanasi, who he believes has not done any significant development work in the country over the past five years and only incited communal disharmony.
In 2014, Yadav had filed his nomination from Lucknow Lok Sabha seat, intending to take on Modi, but his nomination was allegedly rejected by the authorities.
"The big-shot politicians see me as a threat now. The last election, they had asked for the rejection of my nomination from Lucknow."
While some politicians spend a fortune to make their nomination an extraordinary affair, like the one witnessed last week in Varanasi, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a two-day mega-event as he filed his nomination from the temple city, Yadav came up with a rather modest and unusual way of joining the political bandwagon.
