Today in Politics: PM Modi gets set to file nomination in Varanasi, eyes third term

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to file his nomination from the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, seeking a third consecutive term from the constituency.

PM Modi held a six-kilometre-long roadshow in Varanasi on Monday. He was accompanied by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He stayed overnight in the city at the BLW guesthouse.

On Tuesday morning, PM Modi will take a dip in the Ganges before filing his nomination papers.

The Varanasi seat will go to polls in the seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha elections on June 1.

PM Modi will take on Congress candidate Ajay Rai, who is the Opposition INDIA bloc’s joint nominee against him. The UP Congress chief, Rai was also fielded by the Congress against Modi in Varanasi in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but he had finished third both times. In the 2019 polls, PM Modi had defeated the Samajwadi Party (SP)’s Shalini Yadav by over 4.79 lakh votes.

The body of senior BJP leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, 72, who passed away at AIIMS Delhi on Monday night after battling cancer for months, will reach his Rajender Nagar home in Patna on Tuesday morning. He will be cremated later in the day in the city, according to BJP sources.

President Droupadi Murmu, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, PM Modi, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and a slew of top leaders cutting across party lines condoled the demise of Sushil Modi and paid him tributes.

PM Modi is going to address a mega rally at Koderma in Jharkhand on Tuesday afternoon.

BJP national president J P Nadda is visiting Amethi. He will address a public meeting at Munshiganj in Amethi in support of BJP candidate and Union minister Smriti Irani who is pitted against the Congress’s Kishori Lal