State BJP hopes for Yogi touch in polls

New Delhi: The BJP in Delhi wants newly elected Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, to campaign for the party in the municipal elections scheduled for April 23.

The BJP state unit has sent 53 names of the party’s star campaigners, including the names of the chief ministers of all the party ruled states, to the central leadership for their approval. In addition to this, several Central ministers are also likely to join the campaign.

According to Delhi BJP vice-president Rajiv Babbar, based on the demands of the party workers, the state unit has prepared a list of 42 star campaigners and sent it to the central leadership, seeking approval.

“The list of star campaigners submitted to central leadership includes chief ministers of almost all the BJP ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath Yogi and other. The list also includes 13 Union ministers, all the Lok Sabha members from Delhi and Hema Malini, and other senior party leaders,” said Mr Babbar.

The party has planned to rope in nine chief ministers, including Adityanath Yogi, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje, Manohar Lal Khattar, Raman Singh, Raghubar Das, Sarbananda Sonowal, and Devendra Fadnavis. Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya will also seek votes for the BJP candidates in the civic polls.

However, the names of the newly elected chief minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar and Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh were missing from the list of the star campaigners of Delhi BJP for the civic polls.

A party insider said that after Mr Yogi was appointed as chief minister, his demand among the workers has increased immensely and he is in the top of the list.

Among the 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 the party candidates.

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari will lead the party campaign. Among the other star campaigners, the party has planned to rope in Uttar Pradesh power minister Srikant Sharma, Delhi BJP in-charge Shyam Jaju, senior party leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Shahnawaz Hussain, former deputy chief minister of Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi, and Bhojpuri star Ravi Kishan, who recently joined BJP.

Among the local leaders, the party has made Vijender Gupta, Satish Upadhyay and Pawan Sharma star campaigners in the civic polls.