On April 25, Amit Shah will begin the BJP campaign in Sonepur

A public gathering at Sonepur, one of the seven Assembly districts under the Balangir parliamentary seat, will be addressed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on April 25.

Golak Mohapatra, the deputy president of the state BJP, said on Saturday that the BJP icon would begin the campaign in a town in western Odisha, affecting the seven Assembly seats within the Balangir Lok Sabha constituency. Shah is scheduled to make a nighttime stop in the state capital after the Sonepur rally. He will meet with BJP workers and state leaders to talk about election strategy.

“Maa, Mati, Matrubhasa, and Odia Asmita” would be the primary election platform of the party, Mohapatra said, asserting that the BJP will build a double engine administration in the state. He predicted that after Shah’s visit, the party’s election campaign will pick up steam. After seeing Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the state secretariat and having a private discussion with Patnaik’s private secretary VK Pandian, the union minister last visited the state in August 2023, which sparked rumors of an electoral agreement with the BJD.

Shah’s gathering at Sonepur would affect the Balangir parliamentary constituency’s voters. Four-term Member of Parliament Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo has been renominated by the party for the Lok Sabha seat covering the Assembly seats of Birmaharajpur, Loisingha, Balangir, Patnagarh, Titilagarh, and Kantabanji. One of the four Lok Sabha seats up for election is Balangir on May 13.