Bharatiya Janata Party national president Jagat Prakash Nadda will kick-start party’s `Mission-2024’ by holding a rally in Ghazipur, the parliamentary seat the party had lost in the last election along with all the assembly seats from the district in the 2022 assembly polls.
The rally will be held on January 20, the day Nadda is likely to get another term of presidency.
Nadda took over as the national president of the BJP on January 20, 2020. His three-year term as national president will end on January 19 this year.
Sources said that as the organisational head of the BJP, Nadda would start his second innings with a bang from Ghazipur.
The BJP has set a target of winning all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 general election. To achieve this goal, the party has especially focused on those 14 seats in the state it had lost in the last Lok Sabha polls.
Though Nadda's visit to Ghazipur is part of the BJP's campaign to regain the lost grounds, there is another reason for the party to choose this district to start its Lok Sabha campaign.
Afzal Ansari of Bahujan Samaj Party had won the Ghazipur seat. Afzal is the elder brother of jailed mafia Mukhtar Ansari.
Yogi Adityanath raj's law and order will also be on the test in the Lok Sabha election. For this reason, by blowing the election bugle from Ghazipur, the BJP will give more edge to the aggressive campaign.
Along with the Ghazipur seat, the BJP had also lost the neighboring Ghosi, Lalganj and Jaunpur seats in the last Lok Sabha polls. Nadda's rally in Ghazipur will find its echo in these parliamentary constituencies also.
Sources said that before addressing the public meeting in Ghazipur, Nadda would hold a meeting with BJP office-bearers and workers. Since a large number of residents of Ghazipur are in the army, it is expected that Nadda may interact with the soldiers and honour a few of them.
BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary had gone to Ghazipur and given guidelines for preparations in view of Nadda's programme.