UP Polls 2017: Careful Timing Guides Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi Tour In PM's Varanasi

Varanasi: As Uttar Pradesh starts voting on February 11, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and wingman Rahul Gandhi will drive through the streets of Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to ensure they get significant press play, said their strategists today.

The five-hour roadshow will be held as Western Uttar Pradesh, seen as skewed more towards the BJP, begins the state's seven days of voting. Mr Gandhi's party, the Congress, and Mr Yadav's Samajwadi Party want to use the occasion to stress their alliance as a viable option, said sources handling their joint campaign.

Today, the pair drove 11 kilometers through Agra, a stronghold for Dalit icon and four-time Chief Minister Mayawati, who won six of the nine assembly seats here in 2012.

Mr Gandhi and Mr Yadav are likely to hold joint appearances in Kanpur and Meerut next week before their tour of Varanasi in the amped-up Mercedes SUV that is their ride.

Varanasi has five assembly seats. In the general election, the ancient city chose the PM decisively as its parliamentarian in Mr Modi's first-ever election outside Gujarat. Then, like now, Mr Modi is leading his party's campaign for Uttar Pradesh.

The public meetings of Mr Yadav and Mr Gandhi come as their cadre are reportedly dissatisfied with the partnership, which they say was forced upon them.  

The Congress feels that the 105 seats it has been assigned as junior partner (UP has 403 seats) are a flagrant insult to its standing. Mr Yadav's Samajwadi Party contends that for an outfit who performed skimpily in the last state election in 2012 and then the general election two years later, the Congress has been given a far bigger deal than it deserves.