With banners and buntings and lifesize posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the national Capital is all set to witness the maiden mega rally of the face of BJP for the upcoming Assembly polls. While the Abhinandan Rally will mark the beginning of BJP’s campaign for the elections, the State unit of the party is leaving no stone unturned for turning it into a grand success.
The rally will also be attended by a battery of top leaders, including Chief Ministers of Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra where the party captured power in recent elections. “All the CMs and even the party’s winners of Jammu & Kashmir will be felicitated at the event,” said Prabhat Jha, BJP’s national vice president in-charge. BJP president Amit Shah, national general (organisation) Ram lal, Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu and Piyush Goyal will share the dais with Modi besides the seven party MPs from Delhi. The party has made a sitting arrangement of around 60,000 people at the venue, even as it has claimed that over one lakh people will be attending the rally.
To woo minority voters, BJP has also set a target of bringing around 8,000-9,000 Muslims to the rally on Saturday. “We want more people from minority community to attend the rally of Modi under whose leadership, our country is developing well. We are expecting around 8,000-9,000 Muslims to attend the rally,” said Atif Rashid, president of BJP’s Minority Morcha.
All district presidents have been asked by the party to arrange at least 15 buses full of people for the rally. BJP has also installed hoardings Chalo Chale Modi Ke Saath across the national Capital to draw more people to the venue. At the venue, lCD screens have been installed so that people can watch Modi while delivering speech. The reunification of the trifurcated Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was on the BJP poll manifesto and could be one such decision.
BJP has been out of power in Delhi for the past 16 years and its Delhi chief Satish Upadhyay said the party was confident of winning the polls with a clear majority this time with the help of Modi’s charisma. “We are very confident that Delhiites will get a stable Government by BJP after the polls. The rally will help in building the momentum for the party’s victory,” BJP’s national vice president in-charge of Delhi Prabhat Jha said.
Senior BJP leaders said that through Modi’s rally, party will also gauge the public mood, which will help it prepare a strong strategy for the Assembly polls. “We are very sure that BJP will definitely get the support of people in the upcoming Assembly polls as we got in lok Sabha polls. The focus of this rally will only be development,” Upadhyay said.
In order to woo voters in the upcoming Assembly election, Delhi BJP has also decided to bank on celebrity MPs Hema Malini, Shatrughan Sinha, Vinod Khanna and Smriti Irani who will be addressing rallies in the city. According to a senior BJP leader, the party has so far prepared a list of 18 star campaigners to draw voters during campaigning. The list also includes the names of Modi and Shah.