Amit Shah to travel to Odisha, WB as BJP looks to harvest East in 2019 polls

Entering into the last leg of his 110-day country-wide tour, BJP president Amit Shah has now turned his focus to Odisha and West Bengal -- the eastern states, the party is banking heavily on to offset the anticipated dip in its performance in the Hindi belt in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

While Shah will be in Bhubaneshwar for seventy-two hours from September 6, he will tour Kolkata five days later to oversee poll preparedness as the 120 seats the BJP has never won fell in these two territories. The BJP chief had been to both these states as part his 15-day long booth-level visits to galvanise grassroots workers earlier.

A BJP leader stated that the party has planned a huge rally on September 8 in Bhubaneshwar which would be seen as a show of strength in the BJD-ruled state.

Of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, Shah like in other states has assigned the task to five senior party leaders, including three union ministers, to curate four lost constituencies each to bolster the prospects of the party in the next polls, said a BJP leader.

Dharmendra Pradhan, Prakash Javadekar and Jual Oram are the ministers who will manage the seats and from the party's side Arun Singh, who is in-charge of the state, and Anil Jain will do the same job.

The party is banking its hope on anti-incumbency towards the ruling Navin Patnaik government which is also facing internal squabbling and enthusiasm among its leaders and cadres after it won 300 seats in panchayat elections held early this year.

Similarly, the BJP president's visit to Kolkatta from September 11 has gained importance as it comes after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee joined the grand opposition rally RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav organised on Sunday. Interestingly, Banerjee had also recently remarked that she "favours" Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than Amit Shah.

The party is looking for a bigger venue to host Shah's meeting in the state capital during his three-day sojourn.

The TMC has been winning all the polls but the BJP is working hard to emerge as the main opposition party in the state so that it could benefit from the anti-Mamata Banerjee votes in the next general elections.