Not from Varanasi, but Modi to contest 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Puri?

Bhubaneswar, Jan 3: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi parried questions over contesting the 2019 general elections from Puri, the State BJP continued to stick its neck out, asserting there was every possibility of him entering the fray from the holy town. According to reports, a proposal in this regard was given by the Odisha BJP unit to Prime Minister Modi in October 2018 itself.

"One cannot rule out the prime minister contesting from Puri. There is 90 per cent possibility of the PM contesting from Puri seat," Senior BJP leader and lawmaker Pradip Purohit told reporters.

Notably, in October 2018, senior BJP leaders, including Dharmendra Pradhan and Smriti Irani, had held discussions in Odisha about the possible candidature of Prime Minister during Lok Sabha elections 2019 from Puri.

Odisha is important for the BJP as it reached the saturation point in the North, West and the Hindi heartland States in 2014. In contrast, the party won just one out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha and two out of 42 in West Bengal in 2014.

The ruling BJD headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has had a continued win in the constituency for the last 20 years.

In the 2014 elections, BJD's Pinaki Mishra won from the Puri seat by bagging 50.33 per cent votes. While, the Prime Minister had won the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 5,70,128 votes over his Congress rival Madhusudan Mistry in Vadodara. There was the highest ever 70.57 per cent polling in Vadodara, with the expectations that people of the city will elect Prime Minister from the constituency.

Apart from Vadodara, Modi also won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat by defeating Arvind Kejriwal by a massive margin of 3.37 lakh votes. His margin of victory in this eastern Uttar Pradesh constituency, which happened to be his first electoral attempt anywhere outside Gujarat, also happens to be the highest ever for the Lok Sabha seat.

Since the prime minister had fought from Varanasi in 2014 with the blessings of Lord Jagannath, he might prefer Puri this time, Purohit said, adding that the party's Parliamentary Board would take a final decision on it.

(with PTI inputs)