Nitish to hold rally in Modi’s Varanasi on December 24

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will hold a public meeting in Rohaniya assembly segment that is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi on December 24 in the run-up to next year’s Lok Sabha elections.

Bihar minister and Janata Dal (United) secretary (organisation) Shravan Kumar confirmed the move in a brief interaction with reporters in Varanasi on Saturday.

Shravan Kumar, along with some local leaders, visited Rohaniya to finalise the venue for Nitish Kumar’s rally.

Party leaders and workers from the Purvanchal region will be present at the Rohaniya public meeting, which will be Nitish Kumar’s first rally for the Lok Sabha elections.

In addition to Varanasi, the focus will be on Azamgarh, Pratapgarh, Prayagraj, Phulpur, Ambedkar Nagar and Mirzapur, Shravan Kumar said.

Taking a dig at the ruling BJP, he alleged that that caste and religion are on their agenda while “our agenda is brotherhood and love”.

Targeting the Congress, he said that some leaders of the (INDI alliance) made mistakes due to which formulation of a strategy for the Lok Sabha election got a little delayed.

“Now we are making efforts to ensure that no further mistakes happen. We are going to prepare a concrete strategy for the Lok Sabha elections,” the Bihar minister said.

Rohaniya is a Patel majority assembly constituency in Varanasi. The community has played a decisive role in Rohaniya in every assembly election since 2012. That year, Anupriya Patel, currently a Union minister of state, won the Rohaniya assembly seat as a candidate of the united Apna Dal.

Anupriya vacated her assembly seat after she was elected MP from Mirzapur in 2014. In the 2014 Rohaniya assembly by-election, Mahendra Singh Patel of the Samajwadi Party won the seat. In the 2017 assembly election, Surendra Narayan Singh of the BJP was elected. In 2022, BJP ally Apna Dal (S) candidate Sunil Patel won the seat.