New Delhi: In a massive show of strength by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Gujarat Chief Minister and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will share the stage with many senior leaders including LK Advani, who had opposed his candidature, during a rally in Bhopal on Wednesday. BJP leaders claim that the rally will be attended by over 7 lakh people including several thousand people from the minority community.
The rally has been organised by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan who is going to face elections a couple of months later. It will be the first public appearance of Modi and Advani together after the Gujarat Chief Minister was nominated as the party's prime ministerial candidate.
Other top BJP leaders including party chief Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Uma Bharti and Ananth Kumar are also expected to be at the show of unity and strength.
While Advani had been opposing Modi's candidature, in a rally in Chhattisgarh's Korba he praised the Gujarat Chief Minister.
BJP leaders claim that at least 50,000 workers from the minority community will also attend the rally. They say the rally will be a befitting reply to Modi's critics who allege that he is not a secular leader and antagonises the minority community because of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The rally is likely to cost several crores which will include food and other arrangements like transport and other arrangements made for over 7 lakh people who are expected to attend it.
Meanwhile, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh has tried to stir a controversy by claiming that the BJP bought 10,000 burqas ahead of the rally. But his claims were immediately refuted by the shopkeeper himself following which a war of words broke out between the Congress and the BJP.
The BJP had projected Modi in a new avatar at a rally in Jaipur a few days ago and is trying to erase the image of the 2012 Sadbhavana campaign when the Gujarat Chief Minister refused to don a skull cap offered by a Muslim cleric. But the challenge for Modi and the BJP still remains - re-branding him from Hindutva's poster boy to a leader accepted at the national level.
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