Sensing a groundswell in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday embarked on a two-day visit to Odisha, his third in the last fortnight, to give a further push to his party’s electoral prospects in the eastern State.
The BJP’s most prolific campaigner is scheduled to hold a roadshow in Puri, the abode of Lord Jagannath, for about an hour from 8 am on Monday.
He will later address an election meeting at Angul, coming under the Dhenkanal parliamentary constituency. As per the PM’s itinerary, he will also address a public meeting later in the afternoon at Cuttack City.
Amid reports of the ruling BJD here contending with anti-incumbency, the BJP has gone all out in increasing its 2019 tally of 9 out of 21 LS seats in Odisha. With simultaneous Assembly polls taking place in the state, the party has set in motion poll blitzkrieg with top leaders pitching for a high-octane campaign to oust BJD’s 24-year-old hegemony in electoral politics and come to power for the first time in the State.
While Defence Minister Rajnath Singh arrived here to address poll rallies today, Home Minister Amit Shah is scheduled to address election meetings on 21 May at Keonjhar, Parjang, and Nayagarh and is scheduled to hold a roadshow at Sambalpur, where Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is contesting the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP has literally flooded the campaign trail in Odisha with a galaxy of its top leaders with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the forefront as the third and fourth phase of the simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls are days away.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) with 12 seats had the maximum number of seats, followed by the BJP (8) and the Congress (1).
In the last assembly elections held simultaneously with the general election in 2019, the BJD had recorded a thumping electoral success winning 113 of the 147 seats. The BJP stood a distant second with 23 seats, followed by the Congress with 9. The CPM won one seat and another was won by an Independent.