Phase 7: Nomination process for Modi’s Varanasi, 12 other Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh to begin today
The BJP-led NDA won 11 seats and the BSP two in 2019. The influence of OBC leaders and BJP allies, besides the Opposition, will be on test in the final phase of the Lok Sabha polls
The nomination process for the seventh and the last phase of Lok Sabha elections comprising 13 key seats, including Varanasi where Prime Minister Narendra is in the electoral battlefield for the third consecutive term, will begin on Tuesday.

The presence of Modi’s Varanasi and chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s stronghold Gorakhpur makes the region under the last phase a critical battleground for the ruling party and its coalition partners.
This phase is poised to test the influence of Other Backward Caste (OBC) leaders and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies like Anupriya Patel, Om Prakash Rajbhar, Sanjay Nishad and Dara Singh Chauhan and Opposition leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya.
Thirteen of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha constituencies scheduled to go to polls in the final phase on June 1 are Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon (SC), Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj (SC).
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP-led NDA won 11 of the 13 seats. They were Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Salempur, Ballia, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj, the first nine by the BJP and the last two by its ally Apna Dal-Sonelal led by Anupriya Patel. The Bahujan Samaj Party, which was in alliance with the Samajwadi Party, won the Ghosi and Ghazipur seats, wresting both from the BJP.
The SP and the Congress drew a blank.
The BSP has never won Gorakhpur, Bansgaon, Ballia and Varanasi. Similarly, the SP never opened its account in Varanasi and Gorakhpur.
In the 2022 assembly polls, the BJP-led NDA won 52 (BJP 43 and allies 9) of 64 assembly seats in the region. The SP won 11 seats while the lone seat that the BSP won in the state in 2022 belongs to this region only.
The challenge for the BJP is to reclaim the two seats it lost in 2019 while retaining the others. The SP and the Congress, which are allies this time, face the challenge of opening their account in the region. The phase will test the BSP strategy of going it alone in 2024.
Varanasi is traditionally the BJP stronghold. Barring the 2004 elections when the Congress snatched this seat from the BJP, Varanasi has favoured the BJP six times since 1996.
In the last election, PM Modi won by a landslide getting 63% of the total votes. His closest rival Shalini Yadav of the SP got 18.4% of the votes. Modi has chosen Varanasi for the third consecutive election. The SP-Congress alliance has fielded Ajay Rai, UP Congress Committee president, against him.
The BJP won four of the five assembly seats under the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituenc in 2022 and its ally emerged victorious in one other constituency.
Gorakhpur is a stronghold more of Yogi Adityanath than of the BJP. He won the seat five times as the BJP candidate in a row from 1998 to 2014. Earlier, his mentor Mahant Avaidyanath held the seat, thrice as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate.
The BJP lost this prestigious seat to the SP in a by-poll held in 2018 after Yogi Adityanath vacated the seat on getting appointed chief minister. Currently, the BJP has MLAs in all the five assembly segments in the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency where actor Ravi Kishan won in 2019. The party has fielded him this time also.
In Ghosi, BSP candidate Atul Rai polled 50.7% of the votes, defeating BJP’s Harinarayan in 2019. The BSP has won the seat four times while the BJP and the SP have clinched victory on this seat only once each.
This time the BSP has fielded Balkrishna Chauhan and the SP Rajeev Kumar Rai. Arvind Rajbhar, son of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) founder and UP minister Om Prakash Rajbhar is the NDA candidate.
Ghazipur is another LS seat (in this phase) that the BSP snatched from the BJP by defeating now J&K lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha in 2019.
Afzal Ansari, elder brother of mafia-turned politician Mukhtar Ansari, the BSP’s winning candidate is now the SP’s pick against the BJP’s Paras Nath Rai. The BJP has in the past won this seat thrice, the SP twice and the BSP once.
Mirzapur and Robertsganj went to the Apna Dal in 2019. Apna Dal chief and Union minister of state Anupriya Patel has won Mirzapur seat twice since 2014 and she is trying her luck a third time. Pitted against her are SP’s Rajentra S Bind and BSP’s Manish Tripathi.
Robertsganj that is dominated by SC and ST voters has gone to the BJP six times, once each to the Apna Dal and the SP.
BJP candidate and Union minister of state Mahendra Nath Pandey won the Chanduli seat for a consecutive term in 2019 by defeating SP’s Sanjay Singh Chauhan by a small margin. The BJP has won this seat four times, SP twice and BSP once. The BJP won all the four assembly seats here in 2022.
Ballia is the Lok Sabha seat that former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar represented six times in a row till 2004. Later his son Neeraj Shekhar won this seat as the SP candidate in 2009. BJP won this seat in 2024 and 2019. This time, Neeraj Shekhar is the BJP’s candidate from this seat with Brahmin-Thakur-Yadav dominance.
Bansgaon has gone to the BJP thrice in a row since 2009 when it snatched the seat from the Congress having earlier won the seat thrice with an interval in 1996 when the SP emerged the winner. The BJP has put its bet on Kamlesh Paswan for the fourth time while the Congress has fielded Sadan Prasad.
Deoria was won by the BJP for the second consecutive time in 2019 when its candidate Ramapati Tripathi defeated the BSP’s BK Jaiswal. This time BJP has fielded Shashank Mani Tripathi against Congress’s Akhilesh Pratap Singh.
Kushinagar seat will test the influence of Swami Prasad Maurya, who is contesting polls as candidate of the new outfit he floated after having been with the BSP, BJP and the SP earlier.
Congress’s Virendra Chaudhari is the INDIA bloc candidate on the Maharajganj seat. The BJP has fielded Pankaj Chaudhary who won the seat in 2014 and 2019.
The BJP has been able to win the OBC-dominant Salempur seat only twice in the Modi wave in 2014 and 2019. The BJP has put its bet on Ravindra Kushwaha the third time while the SP has fielded Rama Shankar Rajbhar. The BJP won two of the assembly seats here in 2022 with SBSP and SP winning one each.
