PM Modi to address rally in Rajasthan's Alwar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a public rally in Alwar district in poll-bound Rajasthan on Sunday, party officials said.

The rally in Alwar, which has 11 Assembly constituencies, will be the first major poll-related meeting in the state after the declaration of the names of candidates for the December 7 elections.

"Preparations for the PM's proposed rally on November 25 are in full swing. People from all constituencies will participate in the meeting," Sanjay Singh, BJP district president, said on Wednesday.

The PM's visit is seen as the saffron party's move to strengthen its position in Alwar, where the party had faced defeat in the Lok Sabha bypolls earlier this year.

Apart from Alwar, the party had also lost the Ajmer Lok Sabha seat in the bypolls, and Modi's last meeting in the poll-bound state was in Ajmer on October 6, just before the code of conduct came into force.

In the 2013 Assembly elections, the BJP had won nine out of 11 seats in Alwar but one of its sitting MLAs, Dharmpal Chaudhary, died in April this year and the party has given a ticket to his son, Manjit Chaudhary, from the Mundawar seat.

Of the eight seats, the party retained one MLA, Ramhet Yadav (Kishangarh bas), and dropped seven that included minister Hem Singh Bhadana and Hindu hardliner MLAs Gyan Dev Ahuja, Banwari Lal Singhal and Maman Singh Yadav.

Located in the eastern part of the desert state, Alwar shares a border with Haryana and forms a part of the Mewat region having a sizable population of the Mev (Muslim) community people.

It also touches Jaipur, Bharatpur and Dausa districts. Alwar's Ramgarh, a constituency represented by Gyan Dev Ahuja, who has been dropped by the BJP this time, was in bad light following the mob lynching of Akbar Khan on suspicions of cow smuggling in July this year.