Ahead of the high-profile visit of Narendra Modi to the United States, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav is flying there to oversee the arrangements for the public reception to the Prime Minister by the Indian American community.
Madhav, a senior RSS leader, will be taking a flight on September 24 and stay in the US for four days, returning home on September 29.The organisers — Indian American Community Foundation (IACF) — a newly floated body comprising 300 USA-based organisations with ‘nationalist roots’, maintain that the 20,000 tickets at the Madison Square Garden, New York, have already been sold out with three million strong Indian community in the US “eagerly awaiting” Modi’s first visit.
Asked whether he would have any party-level interaction in the US, Madhav said he was primarily going to coordinate the public reception organised to welcome the PM.
The estimated 3.5 million US dollar-event is organised by Mumbai-born Gujarati medic Dr Bharat Barai, president of IACF, with close interaction with the officials and the BJP leaders. The PM will speak in Hindi at the Madison Square Garden. His speech will be screened live through US cable operators with giant screens too likely to be put up in other parts of the country.
This is the second visit of Madhav to the USA to coordinate among different Indian groups in the US, provide advise and see that civic programmes have a smooth and satisfactory run, achieving its objectives.Besides Madhav, another BJP leader Arvind Gupta, the head of the party's information technology cell, is also visiting US to ensure that Dissemination of information on PM's visit through various IT applications are carried out seamlessly . Gupta has been credited with presenting BJP's lok Sabha campaign through social media with his "dedicated" small band of IT personnel.
Gupta is expected to advise and assist the organisers in making live feed available for the TV channels, webcast the live event and also use social media to portray Modi's message. In India, the PM's speech will be made available through BJP's TV platform Yuvatv.