Lucknow, April 7 : Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh will play host to an election rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 9.
This will be PM Modi’s first election rally in Pilibhit as the Prime Minister and the BJP are pulling out all the stops to make the event in the high-profile constituency successful.
Uttar Pradesh Minister Jitin Prasada, who joined the BJP from the Congress in 2021, is now the party’s candidate after Varun Gandhi, the sitting MP from Pilibhit, was denied the ticket. In 2019 Varun Gandhi won the election as a BJP candidate with 59.34 per cent votes.
“We are preparing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election rally in Pilibhit on April 9. This will be his first rally here after assuming the office of the PM in 2014,” said Pilibhit BJP president Sanjiv Pratap Singh.
Varun Gandhi has maintained a studied silence on his next move after he was denied a ticket. He has kept himself away from the campaign — neither did he accompany the BJP candidate during the filing of his nomination papers, nor has he attended any programme, including the one addressed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Pilibhit on April 2.
In a letter to the people of his constituency, Varun Gandhi, however, said, “Though my tenure as an MP is coming to an end…my relationship with Pilibhit cannot end till my last breath.”
Vijay Pathak, the party’s state vice president, said, “The BJP has changed its candidates on many seats. It is the ‘lotus’ (party symbol) that is contesting on all seats. The people have been with the BJP earlier. They are with the BJP even now.”
It may be recalled that Varun Gandhi and his mother Maneka Gandhi have represented the constituency consistently since 1996. Varun Gandhi won the seat in 2009. Maneka, meanwhile, who is the now BJP’s candidate from Sultanpur for the 2024 polls, became a parliamentarian for the first time in 1989 from Pilibhit on a Janata Dal (JD) ticket
Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party (SP), which is contesting the 2024 elections in alliance with the Congress, has fielded Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar from the seat.
The BSP, on the other hand, announced Anis Ahmed Khan a.k.a. Phool Babu as its candidate from Pilibhit, which goes to polls in the first phase on April 19.(IANS)