The PM’s team is targeting a massive victory for Modi — bigger than his previous win in 2019 when he pipped his nearest rival with 4.79 lakh votes, but could not make it to the list of BJP’s top 10 largest victory margins.
“Our target is to get a record victory as there is an alliance between the SP and the Congress (in UP). Candidates from both the parties in Varanasi had together polled 3.5 lakh votes in 2019. We don’t face any challenge as the PM’s popularity is rocketing. Our only effort is to translate it into votes,” one of the members of the core team told ThePrint.
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Sunil Bansal
Bansal was BJP’s UP organisation general secretary when Union home minister Amit Shah was party president from 2014 to 2020. He is said to be Shah’s trusted man and was credited for the BJP’s turnaround in the state, leading to the party’s return to power there in 2017 after 15 years of exile.
Bansal is spending considerable time in Varanasi and looks after overall organisational preparation, holds back-to-back meetings of the district unit, and follows them up with further meetings. He is said to be working under the supervision of Shah, who himself travelled to the city last weekend and reportedly held six meetings in a day.
Bansal was in 2022 given charge of West Bengal, Odisha, and Telangana.
Ashwini Tyagi
Seen with Bansal at every meeting is another key member of the PM’s core team, Ashwini Tyagi who is in-charge of the party’s coordination activities in Varanasi. This job was previously done by senior BJP leader Sunil Ojha, who passed away last year.
Tyagi, BJP’s former UP general secretary and former regional president for western UP, was deputed to Varanasi eight months ago to look after the poll preparation.
He is considered an organisational man and confidant of Bansal, under whose tenure in UP he rose up the party ladder to become the state general secretary. Tyagi was first inducted as the BJP’s UP secretary in 2010 and was made the western UP president before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP’s loss of seven Lok Sabha seats in western UP in 2019 — which it won in 2014 — did not dent Tyagi’s political career. After the Lok Sabha polls, Tyagi was made the UP general secretary.
His job nowadays is to handle coordination between different core team members, assigned for works such as booth management and outreach, and informing Bansal of everyday delivery of work.
“Our focus is on booth management and to bring voters out from homes to booths as people across communities in Varanasi love PM Modi and his development work. We have to get a good victory margin and keep that tempo till June,” Tyagi told ThePrint.
A senior BJP leader, who has seen the growth of Tyagi in the party, said that “Tyagi is Bansal’s trusted man”.
“Bansal made him an MLC, a regional president and a general secretary. When Tyagi was facing trouble with BJP’s new state president Bhupendra Chaudhary, who also came from west UP, Bansal moved him to the PM’s constituency,” the leader added.
A BJP leader from Meerut further explained that “Rajkumar Tyagi happened to be four-time regional president of western UP who worked with (former UP chief ministers) Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh. Ashwini grew close to Rajkumar Tyagi and Surya Pratap Shahi, who became BJP’s UP president, as well as (senior leader and J&K L-G) Manoj Sinha, and rose in politics.”
“Later, Bansal picked Ashwini. He was an aspirant for an assembly ticket in 2017 from Kithore but did not get it. However, his work in an organisational capacity landed him in Varanasi,” the leader said.
BJP’s Kashi regional president Dileep Patel told ThePrint that “in all of 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP, only one post of ‘samanwayk’ (coordinator) has been designated by the BJP, for Ashwini Tyagi”.
“He is looking after BJP’s Varanasi election campaign coordination with other core team members,” Patel said.
Jagdish Patel
Two months before the Lok Sabha poll campaign started, former Gujarat MLA Jagdish Patel was sent to Varanasi to look after coordination and management.
Patel became an MLA when he won the 2019 bypoll from Amraiwadi. He also served as Ahmedabad city president and worked as BJP in-charge of Mehsana, Bhavnagar and Patan districts.
Believed to be another of Shah’s trusted men, Patel is looking after poll resource management in Varanasi. Speaking to ThePrint, he explained that there are different teams for different jobs and that his role is to facilitate smooth working of them all.
Surendra Narayan Singh
Singh, a Bhumihar leader, is a former MLA from Varanasi district’s Rohaniya which is populated by Kurmi and Bhumihar voters.
Varanasi is estimated to have 2 lakh voters from the Kurmi caste and, knowing the importance of the votebank, Singh has been made the convenor, a role in which he bridges the gap between the activities of various morchas. He further looks after rallies and roadshows, and coordinates with various party cells assigned for poll activity.
Singh is also the dummy candidate for Modi in Varanasi and filed his nomination on the BJP symbol after the PM filed his Tuesday.
Satish Dwivedi
Dwivedi is election in-charge for Varanasi. A former MLA from Itwa (2017 to 2022), he served as minister of education in the first Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government.
He got in a controversy after AAP leader Sanjay Singh levelled charges of land scam against him and was not included in the second Yogi Adityanath government.
Dwivedi is nowadays looking after voter outreach and organising small meetings of every caste in Varanasi. In the last few days, he has organised meetings of sportsmen from UP colleges, Sonkar community meetings, traders’ events and meetings of Banaras Hindu University students’ union leaders.
“We have to map every voter at least three times before polling. Some voters are influencers in society, be it an educationist or sportsman. Our target is reach out to them to influence others as these groups can affect voting and turnout,” he told ThePrint.
Arun Pathak
Pathak, MLC from Kanpur for the third time, was made in-charge of Varanasi district and city in 2023 and currently looks after booth management.
His main responsibilities include organising beneficiary conferences, booth strengthening, preparing lists of panna pramukhs, coordination of booth committees, and taking stock of booth work.
According to BJP sources, Varanasi has 1,909 booths and 150 of these have been challenging for the BJP as they are dominated by the minority community and don’t draw much votes for the party.
Pathak’s job is to map category A (where BJP gets maximum votes) and B booths (where voting preferences change in different polls), and ensure a good turnout on the day of voting, the sources said.
Hansraj Vishwakarma
Vishwakarma has been at the helm of affairs as Varanasi district president for three times, overseeing the 2017 and 2022 UP polls, and the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
When BJP’s UP president Chaudhary announced the team of district presidents in 2023, there was no change in the position of Vishwakarma, who is also an MLC and has held the district president’s post since 2016.
Vishwakarma was said to be close to the late Kalyan Singh and had fought from Varanasi Cantt assembly seat under Singh’s party symbol in 2002 but lost. He later rejoined the BJP and was rewarded for the party winning all five assembly seats under Varanasi in 2017.
BJP’s UP general secretary Govind Narayan Shukla said: “He is a brilliant organisational man. At short notice too, Vishwakarma can come with 3,000 people any time for a meeting. He has a hold over the backward communities.”
“The PM has asked to add 370 votes at every booth and focus on key voters. We will definitely achieve a larger victory this time,” Vishwakarma told ThePrint.
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‘Keep two things in mind’
Varanasi has been a BJP bastion and the party has retained it since 1991, except for 2004. In 2014, Modi defeated AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal, who got 2 lakh votes against the PM’s almost 6 lakh. Ajay Rai of the Congress cam third with just 75,000 votes.
Five years on, Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party got 1.95 lakh votes, and Ajay Rai tallied 1.5 lakh. Modi had got 6.74 lakh votes.
This year, Ajay Rai is again the Congress choice but this time the SP is in alliance with the party. BJP poll managers are, thus, carefully managing the constituency, and the party is also believed to have poached several prominent leaders from rival parties, including Shalini Yadav who joined the BJP in July 2023.
Applauding BJP workers after filing his nomination Tuesday, the PM while addressing selected party functionaries in Varanasi, said they must “keep two things in mind”. “These processions, slogans and roadshows don’t affect the election booths. Therefore, the resolution should be to win every polling booth,” he said.
While stressing on voting percentage, he further encouraged party workers to turn voting into celebration.
“Make rangoli, organise musical events by inviting people to become part of the celebration and constantly keep tab on who voted and bring those who did not vote as well. Our aim is to add 370 voters more at every booth than the last time,” Modi said.
Similarly, Shah has also asked the BJP cadre to ensure polling of both category A and B voters in the first three hours of voting between 7 am and 10 am, and warned that only those workers who manage to draw maximum voters will be rewarded after the poll, party sources said.
People of the constituency will vote on 1 June.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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