A host of dignitaries, including defence minister Rajnath Singh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu and several top BJP leaders, will participate in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday celebrations in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi on Thursday.
On the first day of the Seva Sankalp Abhiyan, the BJP will organise an ‘Ashirwad Ka Diya’ programme at all booths in the state, where party workers and members of the public will light lamps wishing Modi a healthy and long life. Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha national president Hemang Joshi will be present in Vadnagar to welcome the yatris. Deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak and Lucknow BJP president Anand Dwivedi will distribute fruits among patients and attendants at Civil Hospital. Blood donation camps will also be held at different locations. Party workers, government departments, schools, Anganwadi centres, digital influencers, NGOs and elected representatives have all been roped in, with nodal officers appointed at the block, district and state levels to monitor how each component is implemented.
The celebrations will also mark the launch of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s month-long Seva Sankalp Abhiyan with a series of service, public outreach and welfare programmes across the state to commemorate Modi’s 25 years in public service, first as Gujarat chief minister and then as prime minister. Earlier reporting noted: Lamps, street plays, influencers: Inside BJP’s plans for PM Modi’s 76th birthday today The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to turn Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday into the launch pad for a nationwide outreach campaign from September 17 to mark his 25 years in public life.
In Varanasi, Adityanath and Rajnath Singh will flag off the Seva Sankalp Bike Yatra from Rudraksh International Convention Centre to Gujarat’s Vadnagar (Modi’s birthplace), in the presence of Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu, Union minister Chirag Paswan and UP BJP president Pankaj Chaudhary, said Kashi region BJP president Ashok Chaurasia. “A nationwide campaign will be launched on September 17, involving the lighting of 200 ‘Lamps of Blessing’ (Aashirwad ka Diya) at every polling booth to mark Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday and the completion of 25 years of his public life,” said Uttar Pradesh finance and parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Khanna, who is the minister in charge of Varanasi, while addressing a coordination meeting between the BJP and the administration at the Circuit House in Varanasi. Lok Sabha MP VD Sharma, the national in-charge of the Vadnagar-Varanasi bike rally, said, “The flag-off event in Vadnagar will be attended by Amit Shah, Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel, state unit BJP president Jagdish Vishwakarma, Maharashtra deputy CM Eknath Shinde and Union minister Anupriya Patel among others. In Lucknow, the BJP said preparations had been completed for its programmes. Earlier reporting noted: Built around the idea of “seva” (service), the campaign will run till October 17 and span nearly every rung of the party and government machinery, from booth workers to chief ministers. One of its strands, “Seva Mera Yogdan”, has drawn up a list of 25 service activities, from blood donation camps to tree plantation drives, and is asking citizens to pick at least one and participate.
Earlier reporting noted: The exercise is less a single event than a web of parallel programmes, each assigned to a different arm of the party and the state machinery.
