‘Elected PM, but a worker for you’: Modi thanks BJP workers in Varanasi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited his Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi on Monday to thank voters after the BJP‘s victory, and told party workers that he remained one of them.

Modi’s message

Modi recalled that Varanasi’s workers had asked him not to come to the city for a month during the campaign, and said he had treated their request as a priority. “The country may have chosen me as the PM but for you, I am a worker,” he said.

He said supporters in Kashi had not judged the election in terms of victory and defeat, but had treated it as a festival of ‘Lok Shiksha’, ‘Lok Sampark’, ‘Lok Sangrah’ and ‘Lok Samarpan’. Uttar Pradesh, he said, was giving politics a new direction, and the hat-trick of 2014, 2017 and 2019 was no small thing. Political pundits who still failed to see this were living in the twentieth century, he said, and they would have to accept that there was a science beyond poll arithmetic.

Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath

BJP president Amit Shah, who won his first Lok Sabha election from Gandhinagar, said Modi had transformed Kashi over the past five years. He thanked voters for re-electing Modi and told workers they were fortunate to have him as their representative. Shah said that once Modi met workers on the day he filed his nomination, it had become clear he would win, and that this was perhaps the only election in which a candidate did not return to the constituency after filing his papers, a sign of his confidence in voters.

Shah accompanied Modi to Varanasi, where the Prime Minister prayed at the Kashi Vishwanath temple soon after arriving. Shah and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath both spoke about Modi’s tiring campaign schedule before the election.

Modi won the Varanasi seat by a margin of 4,79,505 votes, defeating his nearest rival, Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party.

What happened next

Votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha election were counted on 23 May 2019. The BJP won 303 of the 543 seats and the Congress 52, and Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term as Prime Minister on 30 May 2019.

See also: constituencies

Originally published on 27 May 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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