BJP national president Amit Shah would visit Odisha in the first or second week of April, according to BJP State president Basant Panda on Sunday.
Shah would address youth rallies in western Odisha during his visit, said Panda here. The places he would visit include Sambalpur, Balangir, Subarnapur, Kalahandi and Sundargarh.
This would be Shah’s next visit after his three-day tour of the State in September last year when he had dropped a political bombshell claiming that the BJP would win 120+ seats in the 147-member State Assembly. Observers wonder if he would repeat his prediction this time too in the changed political scenario.
Notably, the BJP has a meagre 10 members in the present Assembly.
While Shah had based his assertion on the basis of the unexpected BJP surge in the last year’s panchayat elections, the party’s later reverses in the rural by-polls and finally in the all-important Bijepur Assembly by-election have virtually rendered his claim ridiculous in the political circles though State party leaders still parrot it.
The BJP’s losses have become the BJD’s gains. Moreover, the BJP’s humiliating defeat in the recent by-elections in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar has further emboldened the BJD with its supremo Naveen Patnaik commenting that the saffron party is “sinking fast”.