Lok Sabha Election 2019: Poll chariot moves into Narendra Modi-Yogi Adityanath turf

Stakes are high for the BJP in seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections as 31 of the 59 seats going to polls were won by the party in 2014. This apart high-decibel seats of Varanasi and Gorakhpur too are set to vote on May 19.

While Varanasi will be keenly watched for being the home turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gorakhpur is the citadel of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Both Modi and Adityanath are star campaigners of the saffron party and any setback in home citadels will be seen as a huge setback.

Of the remaining 28 seats, party could face tight race on eight seats in different states including UP, Bihar, Punjab, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Punjab.

PM Modi had won Varanasi by a margin of 3.7 lakh votes in 2014, polling 58 percent votes. He had trounced 41 candidates to win the seat, of which 40 lost their deposits. The only candidate to get a significant number of votes was Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, but he too managed only 2 lakh votes.

The Congress here has fielded Ajay Rai, who belongs to Bhumihar community and has a considerable following among Bhumihars and Brahmins. He won the UP assembly elections from Kolasala seat three times in a row on a BJP ticket between 1996 and 2007. The SP-BSP-RLD gathbandhan, as well as the Congress, will be banking on the caste dynamic in Varanasi. Muslims form the largest chunk of the electorate here.

Gorakhpur was won by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath by a margin of over 3 lakh votes in 2014, polling 54.6 percent votes. However, Adityanath had to vacate the seat to become CM, and bypolls were held in the seat in 2018.

This is when the BJP lost its citadel to SP-BSP combine. This is also when SP-BSP realised the power of their combined vote share and dubbed it the 'Gorakhpur model'.