By IANS
New Delhi : Top Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) leaders including L.K. Advani and Rajnath Singh will campaign in Gujarat ahead of the assembly polls next month, but no senior Muslim leader of the party is expected to address election meetings.
Party vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi Saturday told mediapersons that nerly all senior leaders will participate in the campaign for the crucial polls of Dec 11 and Dec 16.
He mentioned Advani, Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Jaswant Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Vinay Katiyar, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Yashwant Sinha, S.S. Ahluwalia, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Shatrughan Sinha, Hema Malini, Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh and Sushil Modi as those short-listed to campaign in Gujarat.
The BJP has two Muslim MPs, Naqvi in the Rajya Sabha and former minister Syed Shahnawaz Husain, convenor of the party’s minority cell, in the Lok Sabha.
But neither of the two would pitch in for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Asked if he or Shahnawaz were also going to campaign, Naqvi said, “I am handling things here. If need be I will go, if need be Shahnawaz may also go.”
He announced the party’s campaign plans.
“In the first phase there are 87 seats. The campaign will be launched simultaneously in all 87 constituencies on Nov 27 and 87 national and state leaders will address 180 public meetings.
“On Dec 2 we will launch the campaign for all the remaining seats and 90 leaders will address 200 meetings and rallies simultaneously that day,” said Naqvi.