Is he for real: The Modi question? In one of the biggest outreach efforts by the BJP in Uttar Pradesh after the 2014 general elections, 45 union ministers, including from allied parties, and central leaders will be visiting the state on May 26, which will be celebrated as ‘Vikas Parv’ to mark two years of the Narendra Modi government, a party leader said.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak told reporters on Monday that the preparations are already underway and district committees will be holding meetings on May 24 and 25.
He said union ministers Arun Jaitley Upendra Kushwaha and BJP vice president Prakash Jha will be in Lucknow, while J.P. Nadda, and Bandaru Dattatreya, Birendra Singh, former Uttarakhand chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ and party MP Anurag Thakur would visit Bareilly, Harsimrat Kaur (of ally Akali Dal), Manoj Sinha and national secretary Poonam Mahajan would be visiting Agra.
Sushma Swaraj and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi will be in Noida, Venkaiah Naidu, and Jayant Sinha in Allahabad, Nitin Gadkari and Y.S. Chowdhary in Kanpur, Manohar Parrikar and Vijay Sampla in Ghaziabad, Suresh Prabhu, Sanjeev Balyan and general secretary Ram Madhav Meerut and D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Nihal Chand will visit Aligarh.
Najma Heptullah and Sripad Naik will be visiting Muzaffarnagar and Bahraich.
Other union ministers who will touring the state on May 26 will be Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Giriraj Singh, Juel Oram, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Radhamohan Singh, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Babul Supriyo, Smriti Irani, Harsh Vardhan, Sadhvi Niranjan, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Dharmendra Pradhan, Ram Kripal Yadav among others.
Ahead of the 2017 state assembly polls, this is being seen as a big exercise of the BJP which is making all efforts to come to power in the state. Buoyed by the recent success in the assembly polls elsewhere, the party is set to unveil many more such engagements with the people of UP, a leader said.