Lok Sabha polls: PM Modi, Nadda and Shah among star campaigners of BJP in Chhattisgarh

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda, and Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah have been named as star campaigners of the saffron party among 40 others in Chhattisgarh which will vote in three phases of general elections.

A list shared by the Chhattisgarh unit of BJP also features Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Dharmendra Pradhan and Arjun Munda. Yogi Adityanath, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Mohan Yadav, chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Madhya Pradesh, respectively, and former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan will also hit the hustings. Elections to the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh will be held in three phases - April 19, April 26, and May 7. Votes will be counted on June 4.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, deputy CMs Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma, state BJP chief Kiran Dev, and four state ministers are also listed as star campaigners.

Notably, the name of senior BJP leader and former chief minister Raman Singh, current speaker of the Chhattisgarh assembly, doesn't figure on the list. PM Modi, Shah, Adityanath and Sarma had extensively campaigned for the Chhattisgarh assembly elections last year in which BJP registered a landslide victory against Congress. The BJP has set a target to win all 11 seats in the state. In the 2019 polls, the saffron party bagged 9 constituencies and Congress 2. The BJP and the Congress have declared respective candidates for all 11 constituencies.