VARANASI: Varanasi won’t probably hear the ‘Har Har Modi’ slogan too many times after Sunday. Narendra Modi tweeted and BJP officially clarified that was not the party slogan — although for the past few days that had effectively been the party slogan in this old city. And that clarification came after Varanasi’s Hindu religious leaders expressed unhappiness with Modi’s supporters’ adapting the ‘Har Har Mahadev’ chant.But this will probably be a small blip in what promises to be a big campaign. After the Vijay Shankhnaad rally in Varanasi in December, Modi visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple and conducted a puja. “He seemed very pleased and happy,” said Srikant Misra, the priest who conducted the puja for the Gujarat chief minister at the temple deemed the holiest in this ancient city. “When he was leaving, he said he will come back when he become the PM,” Misra said.Modi will likely come back to the temple sooner, to mount what will doubtless be the most high-profile campaign Varanasi will have seen. In Varanasi, the man on the street overwhelmingly says come poll day, it is going to be a big Modi victory. But the detailed calculations are as yet impossible as the Congress candidate is unknown. Except for two young Muslim weavers who said Arvind Kejriwal could change the equations here, he is usually derided as the man who ran away from Delhi.At the Jaipur Murti Kalakar, a shop near Sonarpura that makes marble statues to order, a tall plaster cast of Sardar Patel stands tall amidst many religious figures and a few freedom fighters. The Patel statue is being developed for an order from Patna. When it is built in marble eventually, the buyer will pay Rs 1 lakh for it.Owner Subhash Gaur, who declared Modi would sweep Varanasi, said it was immaterial who Congress fielded from here. “Even if Indira Gandhi comes back, Modi will still win,” he said. But Ajay Rai is confident that he can defeat Modi, if Congress gives him a chance. Rai is the party MLA from Pindra (formerly Kolasla, an assembly constituency that falls in the neighbouring Machhlishahr Parliament constituency), who has won the past five elections to the legislative assembly and enjoys the support of the dominant Brahmin-Bhumihar community in the region. He contested Parliament elections in 2009 on a Samajwadi Party ticket and came third, winning about 1.24 lakh votes (BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi won with 2.04 lakh votes, SP’s Mukhtar Ansari stood second with 1.86 lakh).Rai says Varanasi residents are fed up of outside candidates and will elect an MP who is from here and will remain here after the elections. Rai is hoping that his party at least will be persuaded. When told about the speculation that Congress is keeping its Varanasi card close to its chest because it is trying to first reach an understanding with Ansari to stand down and lend support to the Congress candidate, Rai says he hasn’t heard anything of the sort. “That would send a very wrong signal,” he said.Rai has a bit of a history with Ansari, the Quami Ekta Dal leader who is in jail facing trial for two murder charges. One count relates to the murder of Rai’s elder brother Awadesh Rai, who was shot dead outside his house in 1991. If Congress fields Rai, Ansari will definitely contest as well. This will mean a split in the sizeable Muslim vote that anybody who is serious about challenging Modi must have in full. According to the 2001 Census, 15.9 per cent of the population in Varanasi was Muslim.Rai says that Muslims will vote for him if Congress fields him. “Do you think Mukhtar or his family has worked here in the past five years? I’m the one who has helped the local Muslims. I’m always here,” he said.Rai used to be a BJP legislator who hoped to get the party ticket to run for Parliament in 2009. When the ticket went to Joshi, he left and contested on an SP ticket. After the defeat, he contested the bypoll from Pindra as an independent and won. Subsequently, he joined Congress. Rai won his first election when he was 26. He is now 41 and seems to be quite the local figure. I later see him move through the market — in a convoy of three black Ford Endeavour SUVs. People turn to say ‘Namaste’, and he gestures back, from behind the tinted glass.Many people repeat Rai’s ‘local man’ argument to me subsequently, including the Muslim weavers. It is easy to see why this is a pervasive sentiment. The physical infrastructure in Varanasi is in a state of decay. Traffic logjam, crowded temple trails overrun by touts and merchants, filth and dirt by the streets, cows roaming all over, polluted water and 7-8 hours of power cuts in a day. But then, as Raju Yadav, an ice cream vendor near the Dashashwamedh Ghat argued, when a PM candidate is seeking your mandate, should one allow an overflowing drain to become an undue bother?