Mega poll campaigner for the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is expected to hold around four public rallies on April 10 in his home state Gujarat.
The saffron party aspires to repeat its previous general election's performance of 2014 by winning all 26 Lok sabha seats of Gujarat. With a strong anti-incumbency factor, especially in the Saurashtra region, which has eight of these 26 seats, the feat seems unlikely to be repeated.
The saffron party is banking on Modi to turn the tide. Modi will arrive on April 10 morning at Rajkot for his first rally at Junagadh. This will be his first address in Gujarat after the polls being declared. People of Junagadh and another Saurashtra constituency Porbandar will be expected in the gathering.
Modi will then travel to Surat and address a public gathering at Songadh in South Gujarat, a place near the Bardoli Lok Sabha constituency. People of Bardoli and other south Gujarat constituency, Navsari, are expected to hear the PM.
Rallies are also being planned in Amreli, Jamnagar and Surendranagar in Saurashtra, Patan, Banaskantha, Anand and Chhota Udaipur.
Modi is also expected to hold rallies on the April 15, 17 and the 20. "The state BJP unit had requested the PM to hold rallies in all the constituencies, but he is likely to campaign in only 8-10 seats," a BJP source said.
Besides Modi, BJP is heavily banking on their star campaigners from BJP, party president Amit Shah, who began campaigning from Saturday in Ahmedabad, Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh.
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Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel and CMs and ex-CMs of other states will also be campaigning.
A surprise from the BJP in this list of star campaigners in Gujarat is Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi, who has starred in Modi's biopic. Rajya Sabha MP Hema Malini will also campaign in Gujarat.
--IANS
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