Uttar Pradesh as always is expected to be the star turn in the next set of Assembly polls set for early 2022, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting the State four times in the next month and a half alone to launch and inaugurate projects worth over ₹1 lakh crore in the State.
On November 16, he will be dedicating the Gorakhpur-Poorvanchal expressway to the nation, which has cost around ₹ 42,000 crore and is 340.82 km long. Sources tell The Hindu that an air force plane may land on the expressway to attest to the quality of the construction, and that the landing drill is taking place near Sultanpur. He will also be laying the foundation stones for the newly commissioned Jhevar airport near Noida on November 25 as well.
On November 19, Mr. Modi will be in Jhansi and he will participate in a programme related to the 193rd birth anniversary of the late Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi. A rally will be held close to the Jhansi fort. A ground-breaking ceremony for a plant under Bharat Dynamics Limited, for the Jhansi “node” of the defence corridor, will also be done while Mr. Modi is there. He will then likely to proceed to Lucknow for the annual DGP conference with the top brass of law enforcement on November 20.
For the inauguration of the completed Kashi Vishwanath Temple Corridor project , a prestigious project started by Mr. Modi in his own constituency of Varanasi, there are three tentative dates that have been put forward, all in December (10, 19 or 27) as there are some finishing touches and cleaning of the site required to be done.
High blitz campaign
This clocking of air miles by Mr. Modi between Delhi and various towns of Uttar Pradesh is the setting of the stage for a high blitz campaign that has four vital components – the first being of developmental works and how much the State has gained in terms of investment by having a single party government in the State and at the Centre, the second, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s visit to Kairana, has been the picking of communally sensitive issues, the third has been the micro-level meetings with individual communities of the non-Yadav OBC and non Jatav Dalit categories and all of this harnessed via the projection of a strong pantheon of leadership.
Setting up of call centres to reach out to the beneficiaries of State and Central welfare programmes had been done and all these components are totting up to a comprehensive campaign for the BJP, which is determined to hold on to power in the country’s most populous State.
