The BJP is pinning its hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day campaign tour of Kerala, starting on May 6, to bolster its prospects in the Assembly polls.

The party leadership believes Modi’s tour, in five selected districts, will create a splash across the State and give a big push to the last lap of the campaign. It has deliberately scheduled the PM’s event towards the last lap as the “shock-and-awe” created by Modi’s blistering campaign would last until the May 16 polling date.

(In military parlance, shock-and-awe refers to the ‘use of overwhelming power and spectacular display of force to paralyse the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy the will to fight’).

“We are trying to get one more day of Modiji’s presence so that three consecutive days of campaigning will shock both the UDF and LDF,” a senior State BJP leader told BusinessLine . When pointed out that the ‘Modi magic’ had failed in Bihar and that the PM’s recent campaigns in Assam and Bengal had not been as spectacular, he stressed that the Modi persona would electrify Kerala.

A host of other senior central NDA leaders will also be campaigning in Kerala from the first week of May, said BJP sources. These include Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, Arun Jaitely, Sushma Swaraj and Ram Vilas Paswan.

Since the campaign in West Bengal will close on May 3, several leaders will be available for a visit to Kerala.

Copter campaign

Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi, whom the BJP recently nominated to the Rajya Sabha, will carry out a ‘helicopter campaign’ for four days in May. Gopi, who has been designated the ‘star campaigner’, will halt in four-five constituencies each day. He will also spend a day in Nemam, where senior BJP leader O Rajagopal is contesting.

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