Gujarat BJP to start Lok Sabha poll campaign from October 31

The Gujarat BJP's Lok Sabha poll management committee left for Delhi on Monday evening to make a presentation before the party high command on their poll preparations. Party leaders including CM Vijay Rupani and Gujarat BJP chief Jitu Vaghani have been asked to kick-start the election campaign for the Lok Sabha polls in the state from October 31. On the same day, PM Narendra Modi will unveil the 182-metre-tall statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Rupani and Vaghani also made a presentation on preparations by the state BJP unit and the government for the inauguration of the Statue of Unity – world's tallest statue.

A senior leader from the BJP said: "This was an important meeting as we got the final blue print on election campaign for the Lok Sabha polls. President Amit Shah has instructed us to start the campaign officially from Sardar Patel's anniversary. We are also prepared to hold a slew of programmes from Diwali, but those will be limited to party cadres. Our full-fledged poll campaign addressing the public will start from October 31."

The ruling party leader said "the socio-political equation emerging in Gujarat" did not support the BJP in the last assembly polls. "But we have been instructed to make our social engineering even stronger, so we can benefit from it in the Lok Sabha polls. The Lok Sabha polls are contested on a larger scale with more number of voters so we will chalk out our strategy accordingly. The party chief gave some instruction on the same," added the leader.

Several senior BJP leaders, including Rupani, Vaghani and Gujarat BJP in-charge Bhupender Yadav, will attend public functions to be held across the state on Tuesday for Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary.