BJP top guns, workers throng Varanasi

Varanasi, May 8 (IANS) As Varanasi prepares for the big poll battle Monday, BJP top guns as well as workers are swarming here with the mission to ensure the party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi wins from the Hindu holy city.

Modi's close aide Amit Shah has been in the city for a while preparing ground, and a special war room here is the centre of all planning and activities as the party goes in the last lap of campaigning before the May 12 ballot in the last phase of the 2014 general elections.

While senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley is already here, and led the protests Thursday against the alleged partiality of the Election Commission, which denied Modi permission to hold a rally and allowed some other events only at the last moment, more leaders are to come in the last two days of campaigning which ends May 10,

"Party president Rajnath Singh will be holding public meetings tomorrow (May 9)," a BJP leader told IANS.

"More leaders will be coming, but the programmes are still to be finalised," he said.

Meanwhile, party workers from all over the country are thronging the holy city.

Modi faces Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal and Congress' Ajay Rai in the Varanasi contest.