NEW DELHI — With BJP Prime Ministerial-candidate Narendra Modi winning the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, Aam Admi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal can take heart from the fact that he succeeded in reducing the victory margin to just over 50,000 votes. With Congress' Ajay Rai coming a distant third, Kejriwal appears on course to become the next secular poster boy of Indian politics, as Muslims in Varanasi seem to have backed him to the hilt. With Modi in the fray from Varanasi where the BJP had put its full machinery in the use the loss of Kejriwal may not disappoint him and rather embolden him to reach out to the Muslims in the coming years as their leader. With Kejriwal having a minimum of two decades of politics ahead of him, the AAP leader could well seek to take the campaign further and build his party with Muslim support base. The AAP seems to have won most of the Muslim support in Delhi as well where the party has come second on most of the seven Lok Sabha seats. "Achche din aa gaye (Good days are here)"- screamed a huge BJP banner in Varanasi, the epicenter of 2014 said it all. If a Modi victory as the trend shows was on expected lines, the shocker and stunning blow for the Congress was Rahul Gandhi trailing from Amethi. If Rahul loses or wins by a thin margin (2009 he had won by 3.7 lakhs votes ) it would indicate that Priyanka Gandhi's aggressive pitch, the bluster, her raising the pitch against BJP's Narendra Modi — all came to a nought. The signals are ominous for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. It would show the much-hyped Priyanka magic has failed. The dynasty could be under serious threat. The Congress slated to witness its worst ever performance is blaming the BJP of polariazing votes on communal lines. — Agencies
