Kolkata: Six Union ministers, including home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh, along with BJP national president Nitin Nabin and Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, will launch BJP’s 5,000-km ‘Parivartan Yatra’ beginning Sunday. The yatra will culminate in a rally at Brigade Parade Grounds, to be addressed by PM Narendra Modi in late March.Nabin will flag off the rally from Cooch Behar on Sunday, while former national president and Union minister JP Nadda will launch it from Krishnanagar. Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Annpurna Devi will start rallies from Jhargram and Asansol the same day.On Monday, Shah, Singh and Fadnavis will kick off rallies from Raidighi (South 24 Parganas), Amta (Howrah) and Hasan in Birbhum. Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will be present at Sandeshkhali, while Nabin will flag off the Islampur rally.After a two-day break for Dol Yatra, the campaign will resume on March 5. Over five days, nine rallies will cover nearly 5,000 km across the state, touching about 250 assembly constituencies. Separate programmes are planned for the remaining 44 constituencies. In addition to the yatras, the party will hold nearly 300 small meetings and 64 large gatherings.“The state govt has become a living fossil now and the strong winds of change will topple the govt this time. The state govt has become synonymous with corruption and Bengal has become a safe haven for militant outfits,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya said on Friday.“There is an upsurge of the Jamaat E Islami in Bangladesh along the 2,200 km long border of Bengal. While Rabindranath Tagore’s statue is being broken in Bangladesh, his posters are being burnt in Bengal. The threat is palpable and BJP’s Parivartan Yatra will put an end to the effort to turn Bengal into Bangladesh,” Bhattacharya said.“This election is going to be Trinamool versus the common man. People have set a binary and the BJP is just a face to represent forces opposing Trinamool. The yatra will give a voice to the protests and aspirations of the people and unite them,” he added, again urging chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to visit the state
