Battle for Varanasi: Congress' pick Ajay Rai is an old BJP warhorse

Rai is a serial party hopper and has been a member of the BJP, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress, apart from contesting polls as an Independent candidate

Ajay Rai, who has been pitted by Congress against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, is an old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) warhorse, who had shunned the saffron party after being denied ticket in 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

Hailing form the influential ‘bhumihar’ (landowners) community of Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, 49-year-old Rai is a serial party hopper and has been a member of the BJP, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress, apart from contesting the polls as an Independent candidate as well in his chequered political career spanning nearly 25 years.

In 2014, Rai fought the Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket. However, he stood third behind Modi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal. Modi swept the polls and emerged victorious by more than 300,000 votes.

Bespectacled Rai, who is a local strongman, started his political journey as a member of the BJP youth wing. In 1996, he was fielded by the party from Kolsala assembly constituency of Varanasi. Rai went on to register a surprise victory over 9-time sitting legislator Udal of the Communist Party of India (CPI), albeit by a narrow margin of less than 500 votes.

Later, Rai won the successive 2002 and 2007 assembly polls from the same seat.

However, BJP denied him the parliamentary ticket from Varanasi in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and instead fielded former party president and former union HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi. A disgruntled Rai left the BJP and switched over to the Samajwadi Party (SP), which gave him the ticket from Varanasi. However, he not only lost the election, but stood third behind Joshi and mafia don turned politician Mukhtar Ansari.

Thereafter, Rai fought the Kolsala assembly bypoll as an Independent candidate and won.

Later, he joined the Congress and contested the 2012 assembly poll from Pindra seat and won until he tasted defeat in 2014 general elections at the hands of Modi. Rai polled a lowly 75,000 votes and lost his deposit as well at the hustings.

Rai, who is tonsured, then fought the 2017 assembly poll from Pindara as a Congress candidate, but stood third behind the winner, BJP nominee Awdhesh Singh.

However, Rai has perceptibly lost the clout he once commanded in Varanasi as well as in the bhumihar community, especially after his publicly making up with Ansari, who is accused in the murder of powerful BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai and several others in 2005 in Ghazipur district. Ansari is currently lodged in jail.

Meanwhile, Modi is seeking re-election from Varanasi even as the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) of SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded Shalini Yadav.

The PM is scheduled to hold a massive roadshow in Varansi today. He would file his nomination tomorrow.