Gujarat: Amit Shah to work as BJP 'vistarak' on May 31

Ahmedabad: BJP president Amit Shah will visit Gujarat on May 31 to take part in the party's 'vistarak' initiative, an exercise aimed at establishing direct contact with people ahead of the state Assembly polls to be held later in 2017.

Under this initiative, around 48,000 BJP vistaraks (full-time workers) would visit each of the 48,000 polling booths across the state to canvass for the party between May 28 and June 5. These party workers would also educate people about the pro-people schemes launched by the BJP-ruled state as well as the Centre, Gujarat BJP vice president, I K Jadeja said.

"Those who would join as vistaraks include party chief Amit Shah, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, state party in-charge Bhupender Yadav and several other local leaders, MPs, MLAs and ministers in state government," he said.

While some of the key leaders, like Shah, Rupani and Nitin Patel would work as vistaraks for one day, some leaders would reach out to people on all the days between May 28 to June 5. According to Gujarat BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya, Shah will join as vistarak on May 31.

"Our party president Amit Shah would visit a booth in tribal dominated Chhota Udepur district as one of the vistaraks. On the same day, he will attend a function of intellectuals in Vadodara," Pandya said.

"Apart from distributing leaflets about government schemes and interacting with people, these vistaraks will collect phone numbers of 50 to 100 people from each booth and add them in a WhatsApp group, so that we can convey important messages directly," he added.

According to Pandya, the exercise is aimed at realising Amit Shah's dream of winning 150 seats in the Assembly polls by uprooting Congress at the booth level.