The high-octane Haryana Assembly polls will witness a line-up of BJP’s big shots campaigning for the party candidates. Apart from star campaigners including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah, the party will bring in popular faces like actor turned politician Hema Malini, HRD Minister Smriti Irani, cricketer turned politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to woo the voters of the State.
The Chief Ministers of two States will also campaign in assembly elections to be held in 90 constituencies of Haryana on October 15.
However, the names of the party veterans like lK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi is missing from the list of star campaigners. The party has also not included the name of BJP MP Varun Gandhi as a star campaigner in Haryana.
Deepak Manchanda, spokesperson of state BJP told The Pioneer that party has released its list of 40 star campaigners for the state assembly elections after getting approval from the Chief Election Commissioner of India.
“Though Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are set to address around ten public rallies across Haryana for assembly polls, the dates and places are yet to be finalized according to availability of time in this festival season,” said Manchanda.
“Apart from senior leaders like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari, CMs of BJP-ruled states like Shivraj Singh Chouhan , Vasundhra Raje and former CM of Himachal Pradesh Prem Kumar Dhumal will be campaigning in Haryana”, said Manchanda.
Manchanda added that Hema Malini, Smriti Irani, Navjot Singh Sidhu and former Army Chief VK Singh will also campaign for the candidates of the party here.
Among other leaders whose names have been included are Uma Bharti, Ram lal, JP Nadda, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Prof. Jagdish Mukhi, Anil Jain, Shahnawaz Hussain and Kailash Vijayvargiya.
The party has also included turncoat politicians who recently had joined saffron party after leaving their parent Congress party including Chaudhary Birender Singh, Rao Inderjit Singh, Dharmabir Singh etc. in the list of star campaigners to campaign for BJP candidates.Besides, the party has also chosen several senior leaders in the state leadership like Ram Bilash Sharma, Krishan Pal Gurjar, Sudha Yadav, Rattan lal Kataria, Anil Vij, Ganeshi lal, Ashwani Chopra, Capt Abhimanyu, OP Dhankhad and Manohar lal Khattar in the list of star campaigners.
However, Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who were roped in for lok Sabha elections 2014 campaigning as star campaigners, would not campaign for BJP candidates in Haryana assembly polls as they would be campaigning for BJP’s rival party Indian National lok Dal during the elections.
During poll campaigning, the BJP leaders will raise the issues including rampant corruption through shoddy land deals during Hooda government, illegal ClUs, bias development across Haryana, law and order problem, atrocities on dalits, problems related to farmers and employees among others.