Gujarat's chief minister’s visit to throw open festival will also send a symbolic message about a change in political strategy.
In what is seen as yet another distinct move for an image makeover, chief minister Narendra Modi will visit Sarkhej Roza on Friday to inaugurate Heritage Week celebration. While it will be the first move of its kind where Modi will be visiting a Roza, this is incidentally the second time that Modi will be visiting Sarkhej Roza in nine years of his being in power.
Earlier, he accompanied Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, then the president, to the Roza in 2006.
The musical event at the Roza will kick off celebration for the International Heritage Week.
This year, the heritage value of the Roza is in focus much more than it was last year, when only one programme — a Sufi dance — was hosted here on the concluding day.
Since then, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), supported by a group of concerned realtors, have stepped up efforts to improve the condition of the Roza monument, improve the approach roads and surroundings, and bring more attention to the monument.
Sources said that this music festival and permanent exhibition to kick off the heritage week was planned long time back and Modi’s inclusion was a later development.
But for the BJP’s poster boy, the presence at the Roza will send just another symbolic message that there is a change in his political strategy. Only last month the BJP fielded 12 Muslim candidates for the first time in municipal corporation elections and several more Muslim and Christian candidates in local body elections.
Then, Modi made a stop in Kochi to visit former Supreme Court judge justice VR Krishna Iyer, who headed the Citizen’s panel that investigated the 2002 communal riots. Iyer went on to appreciate Modi’s ‘enthusiasm’. And then, a couple of days back, Lord Meghnad Desai paid Modi a visit!
A skeptic observer remarked that the world order seems to be changing for the CM. “He is a man on a mission,” the veteran says.
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