With Gujarat assembly elections round the corner, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now at the peak of its campaign and is banking on its most popular face to lead the charge.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to hold close to 25 rallies, crisscrossing the state in the next fortnight or so.
It will be an action-packed three-day schedule for PM Modi in his home state starting Saturday evening.
On November 19 evening, after landing in Gujarat, the Prime Minister will be addressing a rally in Valsad.
On the next day, PM Modi will visit Somnath Temple and then address four rallies in the Saurashtra region. Veraval, Dhorarji, Amreli and Botad have been finalised as the venues for the four rallies. In the last assembly elections, BJP was not able to win a single seat in these assembly constituencies in Saurashtra. The party won the state polls but could not breach this Congress bastion.
On Day 3, PM Modi will hold three rallies in Surendranagar, Bharuch and Navsari. While Bharuch was the constituency of the former Congress strongman Ahmed Patel, the BJP state president CR Paatil who hails from Navsari, has been winning his Lok Sabha seat with one of the top margins across the country.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah who also hails from Gujarat and BJP national president JP Nadda are expected to hold more than 15 rallies in the poll-bound state.
The party has already drawn a star campaigner list of 40 leaders including the chief ministers of the BJP-ruled states. They are also expected to campaign atleast for 2-3 days during which they will be holding atleast 2-3 rallies. There is a huge demand from the candidates for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma to campaign in the state.
Apart from the 40-star campaigners, BJP has deputed MPs and MLAs across the state focusing on each and every assembly constituency. Right from popular leaders like Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak from Uttar Pradesh to Nitin Naveen from Bihar and senior party MPs like Radha Mohan Singh, Nishikant Dubey, Satya Pal Singh and others are already camping in the state.
In the 2017 Gujarat polls, the BJP was halted at 99 seats out of a total 182 seats. The party has been in power for the last 27 years with Narendra Modi being the longest-serving chief minister of the state.
This time, the party under the leadership of PM Modi, Amit Shah and CR Paatil is aiming at getting its highest seat tally exceeding 140.
The state has been a BJP stronghold for a long and the party has set its sights on returning to power for the seventh term.
The state of Gujarat which has 182 assembly constituencies will go for polling in two phases on December 1 and 5. The counting of votes will occur on December 8, which coincides with Himachal Pradesh's result date.
( With inputs from ANI )
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