BHUBANESWAR: Gearing up to prepare ground for the general elections ahead, the BJP has planned to start an early campaign with big guns of the party leading the pack.Termed as Lok Sabha Pravas campaign, national BJP president JP Nadda will visit the state on December 28 and address two public rallies. The first meeting will be at Baliguda under Phulbani Parliamentary constituency followed by Chilika under Puri Lok Sabha seat. Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah is also stated to be visiting the state in the second week of January. However, his programme details have not been finalised.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also scheduled to visit the state in December but this could not materialise because of his other important engagements. We are expecting him here sometime in last week of January or early February,” said party state unit president Samir Mohanty.
The saffron party which is struggling to project a leader who could match the towering personality of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and lead the party to the winning post is taking the services of the prime minister and union home minister early to create a favourable atmosphere in the state as they will get busy with the approaching general elections.
Arrangements are being made to organise public meetings of Modi and Shah in some remote constituencies where the BJP has better prospects but its organisational strength is weak. “Focus will be on Lok Sabha seats which we lost to BJD in 2019. The BJP lost 12 parliamentary seats to the regional party and in five seats the winning gap was very narrow,” Mohanty said.
Of the 21 parliamentary seats in the state, the BJD had won 12 while the BJP improved its tally from one to eight in the 2019 election. The Congress emerged victorious in the lone seat of Koraput. Apart from addressing public meetings, Nadda will visit an important place in the areas of his visit, meet eminent personalities of the area and interact with booth and mandal-level workers, and the team handling the parliamentary seats, sources in the party said.
Odisha is among the four states including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Telangana where the BJP has found foothold but been unable to breach the BJD bastion to form government despite best of its efforts.