Next on BJP agenda: Collect iron tools for Sardar Patel’s statue

NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leaders will participate in a multicity campaign on December 15 to mobilise support to collect iron tools from farmers to build Sardar Patel’s 182-metre tall ‘Statue of Unity’, which is being projected as the pet project of the party’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

The party’s top leaders including LK Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley will fan out across the country for the campaign, which will be on the lines of kar seva or voluntary service, a BJP leader said.

Modi and Advani are likely to lead the ‘Run for Unity’ in Gujarat while party chief Rajnath Singh will be in Uttarakhand, Swaraj in Bhopal and Jaitley in Delhi. Around 15 other leaders will be in various other cities to mobilise support for the statue that will come up on a tiny island in the middle of Narmada river at Kevadia, said the leader, who did not wish to be named.

The campaign will serve to project Modi as well as present a picture of unity in the party, besides giving an opportunity to reach out to farmers ahead of the 2014 general elections, the leader added.

When Modi was named as the party’s prime ministerial candidate in September, Advani had stayed away from the press conference where the announcement was made.

However, Advani, who shared the dais with Modi at the foundation laying ceremony of the statue in Kevadia, praised the Gujarat chief minister for the decision to build the statue.

As Patel sparked off a political row between the Congress and BJP over his attempt to appropriate the late icon of freedom movement and Congress stalwart Patel, Advani wrote a series of blogs drawing attention to the “differences” between Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel on various issues.

BJP plans to rope in cultural and social groups, and personalities, in various places for its campaign. The project is being handled by the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Rashtriya Ekta Trust headed by Modi.