Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh in UP today, key engagements lined up

Home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh are expected to visit Uttar Pradesh on Friday, with an eye on the assembly elections in the state to be held early next year.

Amit Shah will be in Varanasi for two days – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency – where the union home minister will address a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assembly in-charges and district chiefs.

Rajnath Singh will be in Lucknow for three days – his own Lok Sabha constituency – where he is expected to hold talks with chief minister Yogi Adityanath regarding a defence corridor project in the state. Singh is also expected to inspect development work, carry out a number of inaugurations, and unveil former Lucknow mayor Akhilesh Das’s statue. The defence minister will hold meetings with party cadres.

In Varanasi, Amit Shah will discuss 2022 assembly election plans with party functionaries, and then on Saturday, he will lay the foundation stone for a university in Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav.

On Friday, he will visit the Pt Deendayal Upadhyay Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC) from the Varanasi airport to attend a meeting. He will stay overnight in Varanasi and on Saturday morning he will participate in an All-India official language conference at TFC at 10am. In the afternoon, he will fly to Azamgarh.

CM Yogi Adityanath will be present when the home minister lays the foundation stone of a university in Azamgarh. Shah would also address a public meeting there.

After coming to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, the BJP government had publicly pledged to set up a university in Azamgarh.

Political analyst Kaushal Kishore Mishra, a professor in the department of political science at Banaras Hindu University, said, “The people of Azamgarh have been demanding the university since the mid-70s when Ram Naresh Yadav was the chief minister of UP. Different political parties came to power in UP over the past four decades, but the demand remained unfulfilled. Now, the BJP government is going to fulfill the demand.”