NEW DELHI: That a battery of senior party colleagues is escorting him in Varanasi could mean two things for Narendra Modi. Either he is in need of a last-minute thrust to stay clear of trouble, or he is in a mood to do a victory dance even before the first vote is cast, which will be on May 12.

Mr Modi’s opponent, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal, propounded a theory on Friday. Mr Modi is staring at defeat, he said, and Mr Kejriwal would be the person to inflict it. “Why did no senior leader go to Vadodra?” Mr Kejriwal wondered in a chat with CNN-IBN. What he meant was that Vadodra in Gujarat was an easier race for Mr Modi and he was more confident of winning in the state of which he is chief minister.

His shrill invectives at the Election Commission in Varanasi and the bevy of top party leaders gathering in the Hindu holy city was an indication to the AAP leader that Mr Modi was feeling shaky in the constituency he has thrust himself on after ejecting a senior colleague, a sitting MP from there.

There were other palpable indications that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Mr Modi’s guidance was not as confident about an outright victory in the nine-stage elections.

Possibly the strongest indication to this end came from the BJP on Friday, which said it did not believe in “political untouchability” and was open to support from any party after the election results on May 16.

While still exuding confidence, which it cannot do without, that BJP and its existing NDA partners would win more than 300 seats to form a government, Mr Modi’s aide and BJP’s UP in-charge Amit Shah said that the party was still open to support from any party “if they want to ally for the country’s development”.

Reacting to the Bahujan Samaja Party leader Mayawati’s comments that there was no possibility of her party supporting BJP, Mr Shah told reporters here that “BJP does not believe in political untouchability”.

Ms Mayawati’s comments came a day after Mr Modi indicated in an interview that he expected more parties to join the NDA after elections.

“All parties are welcome to join NDA if they want to give their support for development of this country,” Mr Shah said.

In the same breath he also reiterated BJP’s demand for transfer of Varanasi District Magistrate Pranjal Yadav and asked Election Commission to deploy central paramilitary forces in all 18 constituencies in UP that would go to polls on Monday along with Varanasi as all of them were “sensitive”.

This is being seen as a preparation to have a ready alibi in case of electoral embarrassments ahead, which is a far cry from the confidence walking over Uttar Pradesh.

“While we welcome deployment of forces for elections here, why Azamgarh is being left out from where Mulayam Singh Yadav is fighting and his son Akhilesh Yadav is chief minister of this state,” Mr Shah said.

He said that there appeared to be some differences within Election Commission on this matter. “I agree that the Election Commission should not fear anyone, but they must ensure free and fair polls. The Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath should not be afraid of us as all we want is free and fair polls,” Shah said when asked about Sampath’s remarks to this effect. He also said that there were no more election programmes of Mr Modi planned for Varanasi now.

Giving details of Mr Modi’s public programmes so far, Mr Shah said he had so far addressed 437 rallies and taken together with 3D events, road shows and other programmes. Mr Modi had participated in as many as 5,827 public programmes for these elections.

“Modi has travelled three lakh kilometres and visited 25 states to connect with the people,” Mr Shah said, while adding that this was probably the biggest ever public reach programme undertaken by any leader ever since the first elections of India.

It was not the BSP supremo Mayawati alone but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress too which on Friday dashed any hopes of a post-poll alignment with the BJP-led NDA, an option about which Narendra Modi had talked in an interview.

“BJP leader Narendra Modi in his recent interview had claimed that if needed he might seek support of AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa, TMC’s Mamata Banerjee and BSP national president…

“I want to make it clear that BSP will not extend any kind of support to Modi or NDA to form the government at any cost,” Mayawati told reporters in Lucknow.

Rejecting the possibility of a tie-up with BJP, Trinamool Congress said: “If he says BJP’s doors are open for a Modi-led government, then I will use the same analogy to say that our doors are shut and the keys have been thrown away”.

Both were reacting to Modi’s comments in a television interview on Thursday night hinting at keeping the doors open for doing business with leaders like Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati, notwithstanding strong attacks on them during the campaign.

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