Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP) has fielded Shalini Yadav as the joint candidate of the SP-BSP alliance in Varanasi to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections. A light-weight candidate, Shalini has unsuccessfully contested the Mayoral polls in Varanasi on a Congress ticket in 2017. She is the is the daughter of former Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Shyamlal Yadav.
SP sources said that none of the senior party leaders in the region were willing to contest against the Prime Minister and the party then decided to field Shalini who joined the party on Monday evening. None of the BSP and SP leaders were ready to take on Modi.
“I will work to the best of my abilities under the guidance of Akhilesh Yadav and try to wrest the seat from the BJP. The youth is on our side and nothing is impossible if you make the effort,” Shalini told reporters. When asked how does it feel to be an underdog contesting against Modi, the lightweight candidate said, “It may be the underdogs day ultimately now that the SP and BSP are fighting the polls together.
The Varanasi seat had been won by Murli Manohar Joshi in 2009 and became a VIP seat in 2014 when Modi defeated his nearest rival Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) by a huge margin of over 3.75 lakh votes.
Polling in Varanasi will be held in the last phase of elections, May 19.