Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will address his first rally in Uttar Pradesh after being anointed as BJP prime ministerial candidate soon. The rally will take place in the RSS stronghold of Kanpur.
Uttar Pradesh with its 80 Lok Sabha seats is extremely crucial for any party. BJP needs atleast thirty seats here in order to have a chance at the centre. Modi's close aide Amit Shah is the incharge for Uttar Pradesh.
As per CNN-IBN election survey conducted in July 2013, the BJP is likely get a vote share of 27 per cent in UP and win approximately 29 to 33 seats.
To make Modi's rally a success, a 100 feet long and 30 feet wide stage is being made which will hold the national leadership of the BJP including party President Rajnath Singh, while two side stages are being erected to accommodate the state leadership and other office bearers, BJP city chief Surendra Maithani said.
Special teams have been formed to rope in a large number of youngsters and party workers have fanned out in educational and technical institutions including the Chatrapati Sahuji Maharaj university, its affiliates and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to invite students to hear Modi and his plans for a vibrant India.
Over the last week, party workers visited Ram Leela venues and Puja pandals during the Durga Puja celebrations, where they distributed invites and pamphlets informing them of Modi's rally. The entire city has been splashed with posters, hoardings, bunting and banners giving details of the rally and its venue -- the social welfare department ground opposite Gautam Buddha Park in Indiranagar.
Teams have been formed to work out guest and crowd management, food and water for rallyists, parking of vehicles, media management and sanitation, a local office bearer said. Hundreds of buses have been requisitioned to ferry people to the rally site from nearby areas.
Modi will land on a chopper around 1 pm near the rally venue on October 19 after a brief stopover at Lucknow's Amausi airport. Special galleries are being made for women, journalists and intellectuals. Taking no chances in the run up to the maiden rally of the Gujarat Chief Minister after he was anointed the prime ministerial candidate, party general secretary in-charge of UP, Amit Shah, as well as leaders like Vinay Katiyar, Mukhtaar Abbas Naqvi, Ramapati Ram Tripathi and state president Laxmikant Bajpayi have visited Kanpur to oversee arrangements of the rally.
Bajpayi says the rally "would not only be historic but would also rout political adversaries involved in petty politics". The party's minority wing is also working hard to ensure that a sizeable chunk from the Muslim localities attend the rally and to do so a booklet listing welfare schemes for Muslims undertaken by the Gujarat government is being distributed in Muslim-dominated areas of the city. Rumana Siddiqui, state president of the BJP's minority wing, is also touring the city.
"The rally would prove to prophets of doom sitting in opposition parties that Modi is anti-anybody. The myth that Muslims are wary of Modi will be shattered in the rally," said Vijay Bahadur Pathak, state spokesman of the BJP.
The BJP is also giving special attention to media and separate stands are being made to accommodate local, regional, national and international media which is likely to swarm the city to cover Modi's maiden foray into Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MP's to the Lok Sabha. The BJP's national media in-charge Srikant Sharma is visiting Kanpur Tuesday to take stock of the preparations for the media.
With general elections scheduled for 2014, the party is specially eyeing the rally for Lok Sabha seats like Farrukhabad, Fatehpur, Kannauj Kanpur, Akbarpur, and Etawah - seats held by either the Congress or the SP. With the area being a Mulayam Singh Yadav bastion, the party is also doing a reality check on the ruling Samajwadi Party amid reports that it was faced with a strong anti-incumbency.
The BJP has set itself a target of 40 plus seats from UP. It currently holds 10 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats.
(With additional information from IANS)
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