HYDERABAD: Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several other BJP leaders will arrive in Hyderabad on January 28 for a two-day visit to prepare the party for the Assembly elections later this year.The saffron party, which has been entertaining hopes of capturing power in the State, appears to have done its homework already.
Shah, after his arrival in Telangana, is expected to visit erstwhile Adilabad district on January 29 and take part in booth committees meeting and later address a public meeting. He will also visit Jodeghat and pay tributes to tribal leader Komaram Bheem. He will also take part in a booth committee meeting in Mancherial.
The BJP hopes that at the public meeting, several BRS and Congress leaders would join the saffron party.The BJP has of late been nurturing the tribals’ constituency all over the country and Shah’s visit to Adilabad and then to Jodeghat are also part of its strategy to bond with them.
The party leaders are of the view that the BJP should consolidate the support of the tribals who sent their leader Soyam Bapu Rao to Lok Sabha from Adilabad in 2019 elections.The party appears keen on taking full advantage of the ‘failure’ of the BRS government in addressing the podu land issue in the State and thus benefit politically.
The party has set its eyes on Assembly constituencies in the Godavari belt where there is a significant tribal population. The belt comprises Adilabad, Mahbubabad, and Peddapalli Lok Sabha constituencies.
The BJP leaders hope that Amit Shah’s tour would turbo-charge the party workers in entire Telangana from where the party won four Lok Sabha seats -- Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Secunderabad -- in the last general elections.
Party leaders from Maharashtra are also likely to participate in Shah’s programme as Adilabad district shares its border with the neighbouring State and is thus close to Nagpur, Yavatmal, Chandrapur, and Nanded.
They expect that Amit Shah’s programme would neutralise any impact the BRS may have on the Telugu-speaking people in Maharashtra in the wake of the TRS metamorphosing into BRS.