Ram Nath Kovind, the ruling NDA’s Presidential nominee, and BJP President Amit Shah will visit Gujarat on Saturday (July 15) to canvass support for the July 17 poll to elect the next Head of State of the Republic of India.
Bhupendra Yadav, BJP in-charge for Gujarat, will also accompany them.
They had postponed their scheduled visit earlier this week owing to the terrorist attack on the Amarnath pilgrims at Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir, in which seven people from Gujarat died and over a dozen injured.
Kovind will canvass support from the electoral college comprising MPs and MLAs. Amit Shah is also a sitting BJP MLA from Naranpura Assembly constituency in Ahmedabad.
The BJP chief’s fresh visit is taking place in the backdrop of recent setbacks to the poll-bound BJP. While the textile merchants’ indefinite strike at Surat and Ahmedabad continues, against the GST, the unified Patidar community leadership is threatening to launch an August ‘uprising’. On Thursday, caste clashes claimed two lives in Surendranagar district of Gujarat where Assembly elections are due by December 2017.
A year ago, the then Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, otherwise seen as an ‘Iron Lady’, was replaced due to her ‘poor performance’ in handling the Patidar agitation properly. But her politically featherweight successor, Vijay Rupani, is now seen as even less effective. A worried BJP is trying to put its house in order and entirely depends on the leadership acumen of Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rescue its boat.
The state’s top BJP leader, Modi, is expected to pay his 15th visit to Gujarat next week to refurbish the ruling party’s sagging morale and image which, even in the absence of effective Opposition, is dreading anti-incumbency in different regions on different issues.