New Delhi, Mar 30(HT): Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah will on Saturday file his nomination for the Lok Sabha polls in Gandhinagar following a mega rally and a roadshow in the Gujarat capital. The nomination filing has been planned to be an event to showcase the alliance power of the BJP-led coalition.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley along with his cabinet colleagues and Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari will be present when Shah files his nomination papers in the district election office this afternoon. Top NDA leaders are also expected to accompany Shah, who is scheduled to address a poll rally and take out a road show before filing his nomination.
Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, Shiromani Akali Dal supremo Parkash Singh Badal and Lok Janshakti Party president and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan will accompany Shah in Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency.
Shah has replaced BJP veteran L K Advani as party candidate from Gandhinagar. Advani had won the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat uninterrupted between 1998 and 2014.
The presence of the top BJP-led NDA brass at the event is being seen by observers as a show of support for Shah and an acknowledgement of him being the second most powerful leader in the alliance after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Sharing the details about the event, BJP’s Gujarat unit president Jitu Vaghani said the four-km road-show would start from Sardar Patel Statue in the Naranpura area of Ahmedabad and will culminate at Patidar Chowk in the Ghatlodia area.
Party workers would greet Shah by forming a human chain on the road in Gandhinagar, he said.
“Shah would also address people before starting his road-show in the presence of our two union ministers and NDA leaders Badal and Thackeray. Shah may land in Gujarat tonight and the road-show would begin at 9 am tomorrow,” Vaghani said.
From Patidar Chowk, Shah would head to Gandhinagar in his car to file his nomination papers.
Shah, who was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, has been nominated by the BJP for the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat.
Last date for filing nominations is April 4. Polling for all the 26 seats of Gujarat will take place on April 23.