This will be Prime Minister Narendra Modi's eighth visit to Gujarat in the last nine months.
Highlights
- PM holds grand roadshow with huge bikers rally, special lights in Surat
- He will inaugurate a series of development projects across Gujarat
- He will address a rally in Katargam with significant Patidar population
Soon after addressing the concluding session of the two-day BJP National Executive meeting in Odisha today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will set out on a two-day tour to Gujarat. This will be his eighth visit to his home state in the last nine months which is going to the polls in November.
PM Modi will arrive at Surat airport at 7 pm and a bikers rally will escort him to the circuit house. "He is visiting Surat for the first time after the BJP's landslide victory in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. We are very excited to receive him," state BJP chief Jitu Vaghani said.
The entire stretch from the Surat airport to the circuit house has been decked up and all government and commercial buildings along the route will be illuminated. PM Modi will hold meetings with Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and other BJP leaders at the circuit house.
On Monday, PM Modi will inaugurate a Rs 400-crore hospital in Surat run by a welfare trust, a cattle feed plant and an ice-cream facility of Surat District Co-operative Milk Producers Union at Bajipura village in Tapi district, and a diamond factory at Ichhapore Gems and Jewellery Park.
He will also inaugurate the first phase of an irrigation project at Botad in Saurashtra, and lay the foundation stone for the second phase of the scheme. The scheme, Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI), aims to fill 115 dams in the parched Saurashtra region by diverting floodwaters overflowing from the Sardar Sarovar Dam across the Narmada river.
He will lay the foundation stone of some projects and distribute assistance to beneficiaries of government welfare schemes, the Administration of UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli said. Around 21,000 beneficiaries will receive help kits under different schemes, said Daman and Diu Publicity Secretary Vikram Singh Malik.
He will also address a rally in Katargam area with significant Patidar population. The Patidars have been at loggerheads with the BJP over the reservation issue. Traditionally, BJP voters, the Patidars led by quota activist Hardik Patel seem to hold a grudge against the BJP government after a crackdown on the reservation agitation a few years back.
Mr Patel was exiled from Gujarat and spent half a year in Udaipur in Rajasthan as the condition for his bail after his arrest in 2015 for violence during protests over quota for Patels. Around a dozen people were killed when a rally he called led to violence across the state.
Mr Patel was in jail for nine months before he was granted bail on the condition that he would leave Gujarat immediately. The young campaigner has pledged to ensure BJP's defeat in the Gujarat polls.
The BJP has been in power Gujarat since 1998 and it is seeking a fifth consecutive term. The party has deployed the slogan "
UP mein 325, Gujarat mein 150" (325 seats in UP, 150 in Gujarat) to indicate it wants to win the upcoming election with the sort of record margin it accrued in India's most-populous state.
(With inputs from agencies)