New Delhi, Oct 23: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has issued a 40-member list of star campaigner for Chhattisgarh for the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state that included over a dozen of Union ministers and around half a dozen chief ministers besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah.
Two general secretaries of the party too are part of the star campaigner list and more interestingly national joint general secretary (organisation) Soudan Singh and state general secretary (organisation) Pawan Sai too finds their name in the list of start campaigners which for political observers something unusual.
The list has been made looking at the requirement of the state for it being a state with more tribal population and some glamor has been added by including Hema Malini, Smriti Irani and Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari. Tiwari could prove to handy for the party to communicate with Bhojpuri speaking people in the state. There is a sizable number of Bhojpuri people in the state.
The BJP has accommodated names in the list of its senior tribal leaders looking at the tribal population of the state like Union tribal welfare minister Juel Oram, former Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda and Faggan Singh Kulaste. Chief ministers in the list included Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and obviously Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh will be campaigning in the state.
Some young faces and MPs like Abhishek Singh and Ranvijay Pratap Singh Judev too have made it to the list. The minister in the list included Union home minister Rajnath Singh, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, Uma Bharati, Smriti Irani, Dharmendra Pradhan, Juel Oram, Ravi Shankar Prashad, Jagat Prakash Nadda.
Some other start campaigners included Ramesh Bais, Hukumdev Narayan Singh Yadav, Ramkripal Yadav, Brijmohan Agrawal, Vishnu Dev Sai and Dinesh Kashyap.