Prime Minister NarendraModi will address an election rally in Kathua on April 14 in favour of minister of state in the PMO, DrJitendra Singh, who is seeking a second term from Udhampur-DodaLokSabha constituency.
BJP state president Ravinder Raina told reporters that morethan 2 lakh people from 17 Assembly constituencies are expected to participatein the rally at the sports stadium Kathua.
The rally, to be held at 11 a.m, will be Modi’s second inJammu region in recent days. He had addressed an election rally in Akhnoor onMarch 28 in support of sitting BJP MP and candidate from Jammu-Poonch seatJugal Kishore Sharma.
Voting for Udhampur-Doda seat will be held on April 18.
In 2014, Modi had visited the Mata Vaishno Devi temple inKatra before addressing a rally in support of Jitendra Singh at Hiranagar.Singh had defeated Congress stalwart and former chief minister of Jammu andKashmir GhulamNabi Azad by a margin of over 60,000 votes.
Riding the ‘Modi wave’, the BJP had won both seats in the Jammuregion in the 2014 LokSabha elections while it had emerged victorious in thelone LokSabha seat in the Ladakh region by a mere 34 votes against theCongress.
There is no word on whether the BJP’s star campaigner willaddress any rallies in Kashmir valley and Ladakh regions this time.
The BJP is facing growing opposition in Hindu majority Jammuprovince. The party, which won 25 of Jammu’s 37 Assembly seats in 2014 bypromising to further the interests of the province, is being accused of givingup on everything it stood for.
Confronted with anti-incumbency in Jammu, the state BJPleadership is optimistic that Modi’s rallies will create a wave in favour ofthe party.