Amit Shah’s Odisha visit rescheduled. Here’re the dates

Bhubaneswar: BJP National President Amit Shah will visit Odisha twice for party programmes rescheduled on Jan 29 and Feb 3 in Cuttack and Puri respectively.

Shah will address a public rally at Kulia on Jan 29 in Salepur of Cuttack district.

Earlier, his Cuttack visit scheduled on Jan 18 was cancelled after he suffered from swine flu and admitted to the AIIMS in New Delhi.

Party sources said that Shah will visit the State twice in two consecutive months. While he will attend the public rally on Jan 29 in Cuttack, again he will visit the State on Feb 3.

He will visit Odisha’s pilgrim town Puri to attend the party’s two-day mega tribal convention scheduled on Feb 2 and 3.

The saffron party supremo will address the huge gathering at the national convention on Feb 3, informed Odisha Janjati Morcha President and MLA Rabi Nayak here on Tuesday.

Earlier, the rally was scheduled to be held in Bhubaneswar. However, the plan was changed by the party and rescheduled for Puri.

“Lord Jagannath is the deity of Odisha as well as the tribals. Initially, the Lord was being worshiped by the tribal king Biswabasu as the ‘Nilamadhaba. Therefore, we decided to hold the mega tribal rally in Puri,” Nayak said.

Over 5,000 representatives of tribal communities along with the tribal MLAs and MPs from across the country will join the convention begins on Feb 2 to talk about rights of tribal people and welfare programmes launched for them by the Modi-led BJP government. The party chief will attend the massive rally next day on Feb 3 to fight for tribals’ rights and protest the ‘anti-tribal’ policy of the BJD Government in Odisha, he said.

Notably, Puri has become the focus for both the BJP and BJD ahead of the elections. The BJP’s programme was changed in the last moment in view of BJD’s farmers’ rally scheduled on Jan 25 in Puri.