BJP wants Yogi Adityanath to campaign in Delhi for civic polls
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi wants Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath as its star campaigner for the April 23 municipal elections. The election management committee has listed 53 party leaders, including Adityanath, who they want to canvass support in Delhi next month.
The list of star campaigners sent to central leadership, however, does not contain the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Apart from UP CM, the Delhi BJP wants chief ministers of all party-ruled states-- Manohar Parrikar (Goa), Trivendra Singh Rawat (Uttarakhand), Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana), Shivraj Singh Chauhan (Madhya Pradesh), Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Raghubar Das (Jharkhand), and Sarbananda Sonowal (Assam) -- to campaign during the elections.
Rajiv Babbar, vice-present of Delhi BJP and convener of the media committee, said the state unit has requested for a few union ministers too. “The names of star campaigners have been suggested by our party workers. They want leaders from other states. Now, the central leadership will check with them and apprise us about their availability. Then, we will prepare a schedule for their rallies accordingly,” he said.
“Significant number of voters in Delhi are from other states. Therefore, to establish a connect with them, the party has decided to bring leaders from other states for the campaigning,” he said.
Babbar said all state party leaders were of the view that the union ministers will be the best persons to tell people of Delhi about various schemes specially launched for the city by the BJPled NDA government since 2014. “They know better than us. If they tell citizens about the work being done by the Centre, it will be good. They can explain those schemes better. Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari will lead the campaign,” he said.
Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani, Jitendra Singh, Kalraj Mishra, Radha Mohan Singh, Giriraj Singh, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Vijay Goel and Sanjeev Balyan will campaign for party candidates in Delhi.