Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a massive BJP rally here on Sunday that marks the conclusion of the party's 90-day Nava Nirman Parivarthan yatra across poll-bound Karnataka, said a party official on Saturday.
"Modi will arrive in the city on Sunday afternoon and address the rally at the Palace grounds in the evening. Thousands of our cadres from across the state and people from the city will participate in the event," the official told IANS.
Though Modi was scheduled to address the rally on January 28, on the conclusion of the three-month yatra that began here on November 1, it was put off to February 4, owing to his pre-occupation with other engagements.
"As the budget session of Parliament was beginning on January 29 and the Union Budget was to be presented on February 1, Modi could not attend the rally on last Sunday as he was busy then," recalled the party functionary.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the rally at the sprawling venue in the city centre where the party is expecting at least one lakh people to attend and listen to Modi's speech.
"We have invited thousands of youth, especially techies and executives of IT and biotech companies in the city to personally listen to Modi's speech though it will also be telecast live on news channels and available on YouTube," asserted the official.
The party's state unit has opened an online registration and is using the social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp to personally invite the youth, techies, educated class and prominent citizens to the venue, assuring them of seating arrangements.
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"About 30,000 people from across the city have responded, expressing interest in attending the rally and listen to Modi's speech. We hope most of them will turn up as elaborate parking facility has been made for their vehicles at the venue," added the official.
In the run-up to the state election, due in late April and early May, the BJP conducted the yatra, criss-crossing nearly all the 224 constituencies of the assembly across the state after its national president Amit Shah flagged it off.
The yatra, held with a view to bringing the Bharatiya Janata Party back to power in the southern state on the plank of transforming Karnataka through development, was led by its state unit president and former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and party's other state leaders.
Besides Shah, party's central ministers Prakash Javadekar and Piyush Goyal who are in-charge of the BJP poll campaign in Karnataka, Ananth Kumar, D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Ananthkumar Hegde who hail from the state and the party's all-state leaders will participate in the rally and address the public.
As the pro-Kannada organisations have withdrawn their call for a Bengaluru shutdown on Sunday for the Prime Minister's intervention in the sharing of the Mahadayi river water with Goa state, the party's organisers are betting on a huge response to the rally from the public on a weekend.
--IANS
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