PM Modi, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley will campaign in Uttarakhand
The BJP, which had a head-start declaring its list of candidates for the Uttarakhand assembly elections, has released another important list -- over 40 star campaigners who will campaign for it in the state. With less than 20 days to go for the assembly elections in the crucial, Congress-ruled hill-state, the BJP is seen as upping its game with the new list of campaigners - which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and a series of Union ministers including Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Manohar Parrikar, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Uma Bharti and Smriti Irani.
The list -- submitted by the party national general secretary Arun Singh to the Election Commission on January 24 -- also features 15 prominent BJP leaders from Uttarakhand, including former chief ministers BC Khanduri, Bhagat Singh Koshyari and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.
It also has three former Congress rebels who joined the BJP over the last few months - former Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna and former cabinet ministers Yashpal Arya and Harak Singh Rawat. Mr Arya and Mr Rawat are also the BJP's electoral candidates from Bajpur and Kotdwar constituencies.
The party is also deploying Bollywood actor and lawmaker Hema Malini and Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari.
State spokesperson of the ruling Congress, Mathura Dutt Joshi said the BJP was trying to take undue political advantage by bringing its Union Ministers to campaign in the state. The Congress, he added, has prepared a draft list of 31 campaigners and the final list will be declared soon.