Amit Shah to address party workers in Bharatpur in poll-bound Rajasthan

Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address booth workers of Rajasthan's Bharatpur division where the party had faced a crushing defeat in the 2018 assembly elections.

BJP booth workers and presidents of all four districts under the Bharatpur division -- Bharatpur, Karauli, Sawai Madhopur and Dholpur -- are expected to attend the meeting to be held at Bharatpur college ground.

More than 25,000 workers of 4,700 booths of the division will be a part of the programme, party sources said.

The division, in eastern Rajasthan, has a total of 19 assembly constituencies and the saffron party could only win one seat in Dholpur in the last assembly polls.

Sixteen seats were won by the Congress, one by the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and one by an independent candidate.

Both the RLD and the independent MLA support the Congress government led by Ashok Gehlot in the state.

In the 2013 assembly elections, when the Vasundhara Raje government came to power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won 11 of 19 seats.

The Bharatpur division is the key area of focus for the party's central leaders this time in view of the BJP's 'extremely weak' position in the Meena-Gurjar and SC-dominated eastern Rajasthan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Modi held a public meeting in Dausa in February after inaugurating the Sohna-Dausa part of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway in which the BJP tried to strengthen its position by mobilising crowds from eight districts of eastern Rajasthan.

In April last year, party national president J P Nadda visited Sawai Madhopur to address a Scheduled Tribes 'sammelan' which was attended by party workers of the entire division.

The desert state will go to polls later this year.