GHMC: Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, JP Nadda among BJP bigwigs for Hyderabad civic poll campaign

Several BJP elders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party national president JP Nadda, will land in Hyderabad in the next few days to campaign for the Greater Hyderabad civic elections. The party will also bring Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to campaign on December 1.

While Nadda will hold a roadshow in Hyderabad on Friday, Yogi Adityanath will conduct it on November 28 and Amit Shah a day later. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in the city, though not for electoral purposes - he will visit Bharat Biotech on November 29.

After Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and BJP Youth Wing chief Tejashwi Surya, another Union Minister, Smriti Irani, landed in Hyderabad as part of the party campaign on Wednesday.

BJP OBC Morcha president K Laxman said that national leaders' services are being used to reach various sections of voters in a short span of time for the campaign. BJP's women's wing president Vanathi Srinivasan is also campaigning.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kishan Reddy, a Lok Sabha member from Secunderabad, is already actively campaigning for the BJP.

Buoyed by its recent victory in the Dubbak assembly by-election, the BJP is committed to contesting against TRS in GHMC. Kishan Reddy said, "It was yesterday, GHMC today, and Assembly elections tomorrow."

BJP leaders see the GHMC elections as a semi-final before the 2023 assembly elections, and the party is targeting the state to expand its presence in South India.

Surya, who campaigned for two days, exuded confidence that the series of victories for the BJP would begin in Hyderabad. "It is not just municipal elections. The whole country is looking towards Hyderabad. The winds of change are blowing in Hyderabad and Telangana," he said.

The BJP won only four seats in the 150-member GHMC in the 2016 elections. It won only one seat in the 2018 assembly elections. However, in the Lok Sabha elections last year, it performed impressively to win four out of 17 seats in the state.

Meanwhile, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) acting president KT Rama Rao hoped that the Union minister would not come to Hyderabad empty-handed but would bring funds from the Center for flood-affected Hyderabad.