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  BUSINESS AS USUAL: Apart from a few banners and posters, there's little in Varanasi yet to indicate its celebrity constituency status
  Pic: Debaashish Bhattacharya

Lord Shiva presides over the holy city of Varanasi and few dare tackle the beast that carries the god in Hindu mythology. So when a bull dozing in the middle of a narrow street in Varanasi, an ancient city on the banks of the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, halts the advent of a 'Modi rath', Bharatiya Janata Party workers resort to pleadings.

'Chalo Baba Bholanath, chalo (Oh Lord, please move),' urges a party worker. The bull shakes his head, but having driven away the flies that were bothering him, steps aside.

The 'chariot' — a pick-up truck plastered with pictures of Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate and its contestant from the city, resumes its journey.

Varanasi — a melting pot of Hindus and Muslims who have lived side by side for years — is the centre of attention today. In the coming weeks, it will be the most watched city in the country. So far, Modi has restricted his magic to his home state, Gujarat. With Varanasi, he seeks to stake a claim to the Hindi heartland.

'It's now a celebrity constituency,' stresses political scientist Koushal Kishor Mishra of the Banaras Hindu University.

With Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) boss Arvind Kejriwal seeking to take Modi on from Varanasi, the Congress too is focused on finding a 'heavyweight' candidate to pit against the BJP strongman. UP, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, has long banished the BJP, which came fourth in the state with 10 seats in the 2009 polls. Modi would like to reclaim the state.

Sitting in his nearly 100-year-old crumbling family house, Somdeb Roy Choudhury, 74, says he has no doubt about Modi's victory.

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  SAVE OUR CITY: Some locals feel that only Narendra Modi can solve Varanasi's problems

'The real question is not whether he is going to win, but by how many votes,' the BJP MLA, who is on his seventh term from Varanasi South constituency, says.

His confidence is shared by most members of his party. In fact, party supporters are already betting on the number of votes Modi will grab in the May 12 poll in Varanasi, which has an estimated 15 lakh voters.

'He will win by at least 5 lakh votes and it will be the highest in the country,' forecasts lawyer Roshan Gujarati, a staunch BJP supporter and one of the estimated 75,000 Gujarati voters in the constituency.

Varanasi, with its meandering lanes and myriad temples and ghats, is home to different communities, including Bengalis, Gujaratis, Marwaris and Punjabis. They have lived here for ages and are part of the city's social and cultural fabric.

The city is also the heart of Purvanchal, one of the four smaller states former UP chief minister Mayawati proposed to create out of Uttar Pradesh when she was in power in 2011.

The BJP already has an edge over the other parties in the city. The sitting MP — former minister Murli Manohar Joshi — is from the BJP, and three of its five Assembly constituencies are held by the party, one by the Samajwadi Party and the other by Apna Dal.

But the BJP, clearly, is looking at Varanasi not just as a safe seat for Modi, but as a springboard to the rest of the state. 'They want Modi's candidacy to influence other seats in eastern UP and adjoining Bihar where the BJP fared poorly in 2009,' Mishra says.

There is little, however, to indicate that a new political script is being written in the city. Full-scale campaigns are yet to take off, and there are hardly any posters or banners announcing the high-profile battle.

The one visible sign of the campaign is the ubiquitous Modi rath. The BJP has launched 400 small pick-up trucks in UP, one for each Assembly segment. Five such raths are moving around the five Assembly segments of the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

But work is in progress. Thousands of 'Modi cards' are being printed across the state and elsewhere for distribution, with details of Modi's life and rule. Key rings with his photos on either side are also being readied.

At the party office in Sigra, the corner of a room is stacked with white-and-saffron containers with Modi's picture on them. 'Ek note; ek vote,' says the writing on the containers. 'We will go door to door and ask people to donate a vote and a note to us, whether it is one rupee or Rs 1,000,' BJP city leader Rakesh Trivedi says.

AAP is doing its bit too. 'We are not flush with funds like the BJP, but we have already distributed 25,000 caps and badges and will get 1 lakh more for distribution to some 2.5 lakh houses,' says its Varanasi convener, Sanjeev Singh.

The party is also signing up new members ahead of Kejriwal's scheduled rally in the city on March 25. 'Our volunteers are our strength and we already have more than 55,000 members who have joined us. Nearly 12,000 more have signed for membership online,' Singh says.

At the AAP's cramped office in Maldahiya, a noisy neighbourhood with shops selling iron pipes and rods, there is nowhere to stand — let alone sit. But AAP leaders are hopeful that Modi will be defeated. Joshi, they point out, won by only 17,211 votes in 2009.

Their campaign will stress that Modi will dump Varanasi for Vadodara in Gujarat, from where he is also contesting. 'It will mean a re-election which people don't want,' Singh says.

The Samajwadi Party, which had the highest tally in the state in 2009 (23; two more than the Congress state tally), is also convinced about Modi's defeat. Varanasi president Akhilesh Mishra says the MY combination — Muslims and Yadavs — will play a 'crucial' role in favour of its candidate, Kailash- nath Chaurasia. The constituency has some 1.5 lakh Yadav and 3 lakh Muslim voters.

To be sure, Varanasi has its own problems — dusty, potholed roads, erratic electricity and scarce water. But Narendra Modi's candidacy has in some ways eclipsed the local issues.

In fact, Modi is seemingly the only issue in Varanasi today, which could either work for or against him. 'We are fighting not an issue-based, but a personality-based election in Varanasi,' CPI(M) candidate Hiralal Yadav says. 'Everything veers around one name and no one is talking of the people's problems here.'

Some locals, on the other hand, believe that the first will take care of the second — that is, Modi will resolve the city's problems. In the new Varanasi — with its high-rise apartments, malls, multiplexes and McDonald's — there is an itch to move ahead and catch up with the rest of the country.

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'Only Narendra Modi could turn Varanasi around, much the same way he has changed Gujarat,' maintains 30-something Avinash Singh, a McDonald's manager in the glitzy IP Mall.

The young agree. 'We want jobs and only a forward-looking, pro-business leader such as Modi can provide them,' says Mahesh Jaiswal, a BA final-year student who works part-time in a sports shoe showroom. 'We want him here.'

Some point out that his candidacy itself is good news for the city. Hotel rooms across Varanasi are being booked by political parties for their leaders who'll be campaigning in the city. Travel agents are already a harried lot trying to meet the demand for vehicles.

'It's already three times the normal election-time demand even though the campaign has not yet started in a big way,' the manager of a city-based travel agency says.

Yet concerns remain, particularly about a polarised electorate. Modi has the support of Hindu religious leaders in Varanasi. 'He has our blessings and he will win,' says Mahant Rameswar Puri of the Annapurna temple.

Though the SP says the Muslims will vote for Chaurasia, despite last year's riots in Muzaffarnagar, there is little to indicate a trend. 'We are not going to ask the Muslims to vote for any particular candidate. It is for them to decide. We are men of religion and we stay away from the centre of power,' says Maulana Gulam Yasin, a clergyman with considerable influence, choosing his words carefully.

Mohammad Kamran, a smart young assistant manager at a retail shop, is more forthcoming. 'No Muslims will vote for Modi and that's for sure,' he says, with a shrug.

Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Satish Rai says Varanasi can become Modi's Waterloo if the Congress fields a local candidate instead of sending an 'outsider', as the BJP has done. The party's local leadership has 'an insider versus outsider' campaign strategy ready, which, however, is unlikely to take off, because there is talk in Delhi about former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh being fielded from here.

But with at least five parties — the Congress, SP, Bahujan Samaj Party, AAP and CPI(M) — seeking to take Modi on, the BJP may breathe easy. 'The so-called secular votes will all be split,' says a BJP leader with a chuckle.

For the moment, though, with the 'real' Modi busy campaigning elsewhere, his look-alikes are picking their way through Varanasi's dingy lanes, shouting slogans. Large video screens installed on the sides of the raths air Modi speeches. Their message is clear: he is coming.