PM Modi to address public meeting in Hyderabad on July 3

HYDERABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is planning a massive show of strength in the city on July 3 with a public meeting that is to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party leaders said on Tuesday. The meeting, which the party hopes to conduct at the Parade Ground in Secunderabad, will be attended by Union minister Amit Shah, along with several of his colleagues including G. Kishan Reddy.

The BJP, which has repeatedly made its intention clear that it will not be found wanting in its effort to wrest power from the TRS, is holding its national executive meeting in the city on July 2 and 3 and the idea is to cap off a politically hot weekend with the public meeting. Plans for the meeting were discussed at the party’s state office bearers meeting here on Tuesday at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Bhavan, its headquarters at Nampally.

If the BJP plans materialise, the July 3 meeting could be the biggest political public meeting with the party hoping to mobilise people from all the 33 districts in the state. The party spokesperson N.V. Subhash said the plan is to have representation from all the 34,707 polling booth committees of the party. The office-bearers of these committees, along with party supporters are among those expected to attend the meeting, he said.

The July 3 meeting is expected to sound the poll bugle for the BJP with the top three leaders of the party, Modi, Shah, and party president J.P. Nadda sharing the dais. The party is hoping that it can capitalise on the presence of Chief Ministers from BJP-ruled states who will be in the city for the national executive meet, sources said. It is quite possible that some of the Chief Ministers will address the meeting and appeal to people from their respective states who have settled in Hyderabad to support the BJP in the next Assembly elections.

State BJP leaders are hoping that the meeting will further send what they believe is an already worried, and on the tenterhooks, TRS into a self-defence mode with Modi, Shah, and Nadda, expected to rip into the TRS government over the past eight years, and the now-familiar BJP attack on ‘promotion of dynastic rule’ by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. Also expected to get some important stage time is BJP state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar who has been the party’s battering ram against the TRS ever since his elevation to the position.

The top BJP leaders could also launch broadsides at the public meeting at Chandrashekar Rao’s plans for either attempting to metamorphose the TRS into a national party, or his plans to float, or cobble an alliance of sorts, or the much-promised new direction policy for the country. What shape the BJP attacks might occur in are expected to depend on what emerges from the TRS in the run-up to the national executive meeting, BJP sources said.

The July 3 public meeting is expected to take forward the momentum within the BJP that, according to party leaders, gained a lot of traction after the May 15 public meeting at Tukkuguda of Maheswharam mandal in Ranga Reddy district that was addressed by Shah, and the May 26 unscheduled address by Modi to party workers and supporters at the Begumpet airport.