India
Reaching out to its partners in the National Democratic Alliance ahead of the 2019 general elections, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah will meet Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai on Wednesday and Shiromani Akali Dal supremo Parkash Singh Badal in Chandigarh on Thursday.
His trip to Mumbai, which is part of the BJP’s ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ campaign, includes meetings with actor Madhuri Dixit, businessman Ratan Tata and singer Lata Mangeshkar at their homes. The BJP chief will meet Dixit at her house in Juhu at 12.30 pm and Tata at his Colaba home at 4.30 pm, and Mangeshkar at her Peddar Road home at 5.30 pm.
Shah is scheduled to meet Thackeray at his house in Bandra at 7.30 pm,
The BJP launched the ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ public drive on the Narendra Modi government’s fourth anniversary on May 26. It had announced that 4,000 functionaries of the party will contact one lakh eminent personalities popular in their fields to spread awareness about the work the government had done in the past four years. Shah himself will meet 50 people as part of the campaign, the party had said. The BJP chief is also scheduled to meet sporting legend Milkha Singh on Thursday in Chandigarh, according to sources.
Sources also said Shah will meet Nitish Kumar and Mehbooba Mufti, the chief ministers of Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir. The meetings with Kumar and Mufti, who are also the presidents of their parties — the Janata Dal (United) and the Peoples Democratic Party — are being planned to strengthen the relations with these allies, sources said. On 3 June, Shah had met Lok Janshakti Party chief and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who had raised the issue of granting Bihar special status.
The BJP chief has also met former cricketer Kapil Dev, former chief justice of India RC Lahoti and yoga guru Ramdev as part of the campaign. Shah had earlier said that the campaign was aimed at informing people about the government initiatives that have improved people’s standard of living.
