The party has already launched an awareness drive to familiarise voters with the dos and don’ts of ballot-based voting. Varanasi: To prevent a repeat of the overconfidence that led to the BJP ’s defeat in both the Varanasi graduate and teachers’ MLC constituencies in the last election, chief minister Yogi Adityanath will address party workers and voters during a meeting at Sampurnanand Sanskrit University on Wednesday.
Pathak said voters would be educated about the correct procedure for casting their votes by marking the Roman numeral ‘1’ against the candidate’s name. In 2020, Samajwadi Party candidate Ashutosh Sinha won 26,535 votes, defeating BJP’s sitting MLC Kedarnath Singh by 3,850 votes. Singh finished second with 22,685 votes. Both parties have retained the same candidates for the 2026 biennial election. Besides them, 22 other candidates are in the fray, taking the total to 24. In the 2020 election, Samajwadi Party candidate Lal Bihari Yadav defeated independent candidate Pramod Kumar Mishra, who is now contesting on a BJP ticket. Yadav secured 7,766 votes, while Mishra received 6,830. The BJP-backed outgoing MLC, Chetnarayan Singh, finished third with 4,858 votes. A total of 10 candidates, including Yadav, Mishra and Singh, are in the fray.
Addressing Monday’s meeting, Varanasi in charge and MLC Arun Pathak said that CM Yogi would address a grand public meeting to provide direct guidance to workers and share a mantra for victory. Pathak said strategy and booth management were the keys to electoral success. He said the party had learnt a strong lesson last time.. He said that, in this prestigious seat of Kashi, the hard work of party workers would script a historic victory this time. The speakers unanimously said that the government was working with full commitment to address the issues of teachers and graduates.
This time, every panna pramukh must be activated to ensure the party’s victory at polling centres. The BJP metropolitan unit has intensified its political activities to secure victory in the upcoming graduate and teachers’ constituency elections. Addressing the meeting, BJP metropolitan president Pradeep Agrahari referred to the experience of previous elections and called for introspection. As part of the strategy, it has been decided that party workers will visit every voter at their home at least three times. At Tuesday’s meeting, BJP Kashi region president Ashok Chaurasia assigned tasks to office-bearers and workers to ensure the participation of intellectuals, especially those registered as voters in both constituencies. The meeting was also addressed by minister of state (independent charge) Ravindra Jaiswal, minister of state (independent charge) Dayashankar Mishra ‘Dayalu’, former mayor Ram Gopal Mohale, former deputy mayor Sanjay Rai, MLAs Saurabh Srivastava and Neelkanth Tiwari, former MLA Surendra Narayan Singh ‘Audhey’, and former regional vice-president Sudhir Mishra. They urged party workers to participate energetically in the door-to-door contact campaign.