Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a big public at Nagla Chandrabhan, the native village of BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhayay in Mathura on May 25 to commemorate the completion of a year of the NDA government.
This will be the first of a series of public rallies that will be organised by the party across the country for the week-long celebration from May 26 to 31. The selection of the venue in Mathura has been made keeping in mind that it is the birth place of Upadhyay, one of the founder members of the party.Modi will be the second BJP PM to visit the place after Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The proposed rally has already stoked a controversy with the organizers of the event Deen Dayal Upadhaya Janmasthali Smarak samiti has invited former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the event but have ignored lal Krishna Advani.
Defending his decision secretary of the samiti Roshan lal said that Atal ji is invited because he is patron of the samiti while Advani ji was never part of our organization. Only members have been invited by our samiti, he said.BJP has tried to play down the controversy by saying that the issue was limited to samiti members only. BJP’s state spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak said that it was an important event for them and they will make it a grand show. It will be a party programme and not sarkari, he said hinting that Samiti will not have big say in this rally.
He said party workers and supporters from the Braj region comprising 10 districts would join the rally. The Prime Minister will address the public meeting at 1500 hours, he said. The BJP leadership has s far failed to galvanise party workers. Directives have been sent to all the district presidents of the western UP to make arrangements to ensure large participation of people. Party state president lK Bajpai has even asked the leaders of the Kashi and Awadh prants to attend this meeting in large number. “This rally will kick start party’s election campaign for 2017,” he told leaders in a meeting held early this week.
The first anniversary celebrations of the NDA Government that will start from May 25 would be marked as ‘Jan Kalyan Parv’ in which the party would organise 250 rallies and 500 press conferences.Prominent leaders of the party would be addressing these rallies across the country, while other MPs have been directed to address rallies in their respective constituencies.Meanwhile, BJP MP from Mathura and Bollywood star Hema Malini said in Mathura that she is looking forward to some special announcements from Prime Minister for her constituency.