Varanasi

24.4.2014, 1 pm

Narendra Modi’s highly televised road show on his way to filing his nomination papers in Varanasi as the BJP candidate on Thursday was meant as a show of strength on a day when 117 Lok Sabha constituencies across 11 states went to the polls. It was a grand plan to ensure top-of-the-mind recall.

More of a carnival than a road show, it was colourful, with people holding up thousands of flags with the lotus symbol, wearing saffron caps, Modi masks, showering rose petals from balconies and cheering the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate—the crowds simply washed the world’s oldest living city, considered holy by Hindus, in saffron.

Modi stood out in his pristine white attire on an open truck, crawling through the crowd along the two-km stretch from Banaras Hindu University, where he landed in a chopper, to the district collectorate where he filed his nomination papers. BHU founder Madan Mohan Malaviya’s grandson was among those who proposed his name. Others included Padma Vibhushan Chhandu Lal Mishra, a noted classical singer from the city, boatman Virbhadra Nishad, and Ashok of Varanasi’s weaver community. ‘My coming to Varanasi is like a child going to his Mother. I have come to this divine land on the call of Ganga Mata,’ Modi tweeted.

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