BHUBANESWAR: The BJP on Wednesday submitted its list of star campaigners to Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Surendra Kumar for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah top the list which has names of 40 leaders and celebrities as the saffron party’s star campaigners. This apart, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, as well as UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, are the other top campaigners for BJP. Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das has also been included as a star campaigner.
The list includes two Union Ministers from Odisha Dharmendra Pradhan and Jual Oram as well as two former leaders of BJD Baijayant Panda and Damodar Rout who had joined the saffron camp recently. Party sources said actor-turned-politicians Smriti Irani and Hema Malini will also visit Odisha to campaign for the party in the polls.
The others who figure in the campaign list are Union Minister Prakash Javedkar, BJP general secretary Ram Lal, Arun Singh and Saudan Singh, national spokesperson Sambit Patra, former CMs Raman Singh, Arjun Munda, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Giridhari Gamang. Among the State leaders, the BJP’s Odisha president Basanta Panda and KV Singh Deo, Pratap Sarangi, Suresh Pujari, Biswabhusan Harichandan, Surama Padhee, Samir Mohanty, Ranjan Patel, Manas Mohanty, Amitav Chakravarty and Golak Mohapatra have been made star campaigners of the party.
Besides, the saffron party has picked eight faces from Odia film industry as its star campaigners. They are Mihir Das, Maheswata Ray, Aparajita Mohanty, Ashrumochan Mohanty, Sritam Das, Anu Choudhury, Harihar Mohapatra and Pinky Pradhan.
Meanwhile, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) have also submitted their lists of star campaigners in Odisha to the CEO. BSP chief and former UP CM Mayawati tops the party’s star campaigner list. BSP leaders Satish Chandra Mishra, Krushna Chandra Sagaria and Chhatu Ram also figure in the list.JMM has named 20 star campaigners for Odisha including party president Shibu Soren.