Amit Shah to visit Gujarat for first time as Home Minister

Gandhinagar, July 1 (IANS) Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be here on a two-day trip from Wednesday, in his first visit to his home state after assuming a cabinet berth in the Narendra Modi government.

Shah, who continues as the BJP President, is expected to land at 2 p.m. at the Ahmedabad airport and is scheduled to inaugurate a slew of government programmes as well as address a convention of party workers from all seven assembly segments coming under his Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat to thank them for his victory.

At 4 p.m. he will lead the public dedication of a flyover at the Income Tax Circle in Ahmedabad and subsequently inaugurate various public works like a Talati (land revenue official) office, an auditorium and other developmental schemes of the state government at the Dinesh Hall near the Income Tax Circle.

At 5.30 p.m., Shah has arranged a special felicitation programme at the Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation auditorium to felicitate his party workers of the seven assembly segments of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat. He won by a huge margin of more than 5.5 lakh votes in the April-May Lok Sabha elections.

Giving details of Amit Shah's itinerary, State BJP President Jitu Vaghani said: "This is probably the first of its kind programme, an initiative by the national President, where he has wished to felicitate all the party workers through whom he achieved a huge victory."

Thursday marks the Ashadhi Bij, the day of the Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad. As he has been doing for several years, Shah will carry out the ritualistic 'Mangla Aarti' at the Lord Jagannath Temple early Thursday morning, before leaving for New Delhi.

He would leave a day before elections to two Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat that have fallen vacant after he and Union Minister Smriti Irani won the Lok Sabha polls. The ruling BJP is expected to bag both the seats, for which polling would be held separately.