NEW DELHI: BJP chief and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address his first public meeting after the revocation of Article 370 on Friday to launch the party’s election campaign in Haryana.
“The BJP chief will hold a rally in Jind on August 16,” said a top-ranking party functionary. Haryana is likely to go to polls in mid-October for the 90 Assembly seats. The BJP had wrested power in the state for the first time in 2014.
With Shah keeping a close tab on the security arrangements in J&K following the decision to revoke Article 370 and move the J&K Reorganisation Bill, he is likely to articulate the party’s stance on the big move to alter the Kashmir narrative in the public discourse.
Incidentally, Haryana has a strong base of people serving in the Army and paramilitary forces, with the issue of nationalism connecting with the electorate in the state.
Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, poll in-charge for the state, is learnt to have begun the preparations with a visit to Rohtak, considered the bastion of former CM Bhupendra S Hooda, on Wednesday.