Bharatiya Janata Party General Secretary Ram Madhav is scheduled to arrive in Valley on Tuesday to kick off a mass contact programme of the party for the upcoming assembly elections.
The visit of Madhav assumes significance as the party haslaunched a massive membership drive in Kashmir. The party expects to rope-insome known faces for upcoming assembly elections.
“Madhav ji is arriving here on Tuesday to kick start masscontact programme of the party,” BJP Kashmir media Incharge, Manzoor Ahmad Bhattold Greater Kashmir. “All preparations for his visit have almost beencompleted.”
Bhat said there is likelihood of prominent people joiningthe BJP. “It would be a marathon programme in which most of the party leadersincluding all district presidents and others will be present,” he said.
Madhav, who is party’s point man on Kashmir, recently saidhis party was committed to help bring back Pandits who fled Kashmir Valley atthe outbreak of militancy in Kashmir in 1989.
“Their fundamental rights of returning to the valley have tobe respected. At the same time, we have to provide them (Pandits) propersecurity,” Madhav had said in an interview.
The BJP claims that 85,000 people in the Valley have joinedthe party so far in its ongoing membership drive. “More and more people arejoining us and we are getting strengthened with each passing day in Kashmir,”BJP General Secretary (Organizations), Ashok Kaul told Greater Kashmir.
“We have succeeded in giving justice and development topeople of Kashmir.”
In Kashmir, Kaul said majority of party leaders are focusingon strengthening the party base in a bid to win some seats from the valley inthe upcoming Assembly polls.
Pertinently, in a first, the BJP took a lead in an assemblysegment, Tral, in Kashmir in the recently concluded parliamentary elections.
Official data suggested that the BJP candidate for theAnantnag had polled more votes in Tral than the candidates of the parties likethe National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and even theCongress.
As per the figures, the BJP had polled 323 votes in Tralfollowed by the National Conference which secured 234 votes, Peoples DemocraticParty with 220 votes, and the Congress with 144 votes.