Top BJP leaders will brave the scorching summer heat to court arrest in different parts of the country, launching a series of offensives they have planned against the UPA.
The Opposition party on Friday announced the schedule for its nationwide jail bharo agitation between May 27 and June 2, asking almost its entire leadership to fan across and lead satyagraha against the Congress-led ruling coalition.
The Opposition party has been at the receiving end of criticism for not effectively reaching out to the people against UPA policies.
The jail bharo programme is the beginning of events the party will organise over the next few months to build momentum in its favour before the next general elections, due in 2014.
While seniors like lK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and former president Nitin Gadkari are not part of this event, the party claimed
they will be involved in programmes later.
“We will protest against issues like corruption, price rise, scams of Central Government that have directly affected the aam admi,” BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters.
BJP chief Rajnath Singh will lead the jail bharo campaign in Delhi while leaders of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley will be in Madhya Pradesh and Chandigarh, respectively.
The newly-appointed in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, Amit Shah, will court arrest along with Naqvi and State unit chief laxmikant Bajpai in Rampur on May 29.
Ravishankar Prasad, CP Thakur (Bihar); Ananth Kumar, Nirmala Sitharaman (Karnataka); Sudhanshu Trivedi, Anurag Thakur (Goa); Varun Gandhi (Tamil Nadu); Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Kerala); Syed Shahnawaz Hussain (Rajasthan); JP Nadda (Chhattisgarh); Dharmendra Pradhan (Gujarat); SS Ahluwalia (Himachal Pradesh); Prabhat Jha (Punjab); Balbir Punj (Assam); Smriti Irani (Andhra Pradesh) and Gopinath Munde (Maharashtra) are other prominent leaders who would participate in the programme.