How SP, Cong may affect Modi vs Kejriwal battle?

Lucknow: AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal now has the right opportunity to dominate the media space which he has been accusing Narendra Modi of buying out. The opportunity has been provided by Modi himself after he was declared the BJP's candidate for Varanasi in the upcoming election.

“The party has asked me to fight against Modi. I’m not here to win or lose. I will go to Varansi on 23 March and hold a rally. If people ask me to fight, I’ll fight,” Kejriwal said.

The influential community of Pandas and priests in the holy city are jubilant at Modi’s nomination and are confident that Modi will win with a big margin.

While BJP state spokesman Vijay Pathak says Modi will register an emphatic, record win from Varanasi, the entry of Arvind Kejriwal into the fray has made the contest interesting.

At the moment, Kailash Chaurasiya, an MLA from Mirzapur, is the Samajwadi Party candidate from Varanasi, while Vijay Jaiswal is the BSP candidate. However, the most formidable candidate is Mukhtar Ansari, now from the Qaumi Ekta Dal. The Congress has not yet officially announced its candidate but the name of Ajay Rai, who stood third in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, has been doing the rounds.

But with the emergence of Kejriwal, it is learnt that the non-BJP parties may arrive at an unofficial understanding to ensure that only one candidate – be it Kejriwal or any other – takes on Modi. "The attempt now would be to take advantage of reverse polarisation and avoid division of anti-BJP votes," Mahesh Dwivedi, a political science analyst in Varanasi, said. It is already rumoured that the Samajwadi Party (SP) might support Ansari as per this understanding.

Earlier, Ansari had sought a ticket from the SP to contest from Varanasi but the party leadership had turned it down. A rivalry between the Congress’s Rai and Ansari already exists and the latter can’t expect any support from the Congress with Rai as its candidate. It could mean the Congress may field a less significant candidate from the seat under this understanding.

The AAP has a district unit in Varanasi but it is not very active since students of BHU, IIT and local medical college have not been enthusiastic about it. "The student community in general favours Modi over Kejriwal," Mahesh Kumar Srivastava, an educationist associated with a college in Varanasi, claimed. He said a lot of students felt that Kejriwal would contest from the seat not to win but only to reinforce his image as a giant-killer who downed Sheila Dikshit in Delhi.

“If he loses, he can always blame the media for it,” a journalist from Varanasi, who did not wish to be identified, said. However, the journalist also said that Ansari was unlikely to step aside from the contest, as he would like to take sole advantage of the Muslim polarisation against Modi.

The Varanasi electorate comprises about 77 per cent Hindus and 18 per cent Muslims. In that case, it could become a triangular contest between Modi, Kejriwal and Ansari. In adjoining Bihar, former chief minister Lalu Prasad has been quick to dismiss suggestions that Modi’s candidature from Varanasi will have any impact in Bihar.