New Delhi: In the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh is set to face opposition from the most unlikely of sources — a candidate who closely resembles Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Abhinandan Pathak, better known as PM Modi’s doppelganger, has announced that he will contest the elections as an Independent candidate from the Uttar Pradesh capital of Lucknow.
Pathak filed his nomination as an Independent candidate on Friday and said he will also file papers from Varanasi on April 26. "I am not a dummy candidate. I am not against anyone but 'jumla' (gimmick). After winning, I'll support Rahul Gandhi's PM candidature," Pathak told ANI.
Pathak famously defected from the BJP-led NDA constituent Republican Party of India last year and joined the Congress, claiming that Modi’s promise of “acche din aayenge” (happy days will come) was just an electoral gimmick.
“Acche din nahi aayenge (happy days will not come),” Pathak had said before joining the grand old party in October last year ahead of the Assembly elections.
“Since I look like Modiji, people will always ask me where are the ‘acche din’ (good days), as promised by him ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. I was hurt witnessing the problems of the common man, so I left the BJP's ally to join the Congress," Pathak had said.
The Saharanpur resident claims he has been thrashed and abused on several occasions due to the BJP-led state government’s poor performance and failed promises.
Pathak had actively campaigned for the Congress in the run-up to the assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, holding meetings in a number of seats in the state, including Jagdalpur, Dantewada, Kondagaon and Bastar.
On the campaign trail, Pathak had frequently taken pot-shots at Modi while mimicking his style over promises of “acche din” and depositing Rs 15 lakh in bank accounts of every Indian after retrieving black money stashed abroad.
Lucknow has been a BJP bastion since 1991, when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee won the seat. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Congress party’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Samajwadi Party’s Abhishek Mishra, Bahujan Samaj Party’s Nakul Dubey, and Aam Aadmi Party’s Javed Jaffrey were the candidates.
Singh is likely to file his nomination on April 16.
Akhilesh Yadav’s SP and Mayawati’s BSP, along with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), have joined hands to contest the elections in the state in order to keep the BJP out of power.
Lucknow will vote in the fifth phase of the elections on May 6.
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