The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is planning to launch four ‘Yatras’ from different parts of Uttar Pradesh later this month which could go on for 3-4 weeks across all districts of the state and will see participation of senior BJP leaders from the state and the Centre, senior party officials in UP have told News18.

This will be on the lines of the ‘Parivartan Yatras’ taken out by the BJP before the 2017 assembly elections when four ‘Yatras’ in specially designed buses began from November 5 that year to culminate in Lucknow on December 24, 2017.

“The duration this time will be lesser — maybe three to four weeks — and we plan to start them later this month. We may give a new name to these Yatras as the ‘Parivartan’ has already happened in 2017. All senior leaders of the party, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, our Deputy CMs, state ministers, Union Ministers and senior office-bearers of the party will be part of the Yatras,” a senior UP BJP functionary told News18.

These BJP Yatras would also serve as a counter to the ongoing ‘Vijay Yatra’ of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav who embarked on the third leg of his Yatra on Saturday from Gorakhpur, the stronghold of CM Yogi Adityanath.

Yadav had started his ‘Vijay Yatra’ from October 12 from Kanpur and the second phase from Hardoi on October 31. Yadav will embark on the fourth leg of his ‘Vijay Yatra’ from Ghazipur towards his constituency Azamgarh on November 16. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Sultanpur on the same day to inaugurate the Lucknow-Ghazipur Purvanchal Expressway. Yadav is strongly attacking the BJP in his well-attended Yatras.

BJP leaders said the Yatras being planned by them will focus on showcasing the achievements of the Yogi government in UP and Narendra Modi Government in the Centre and highlight the “appeasement politics” of the Samajwadi Party.

“Such Yatras also serve as an exercise to rally the cadre of the party and make it a mass movement campaign. We will try to reach out to the maximum beneficiaries of the BJP government schemes in these Yatras to impress upon them how the BJP has benefitted them,” a senior BJP leader in the state said. The Yatra buses are fitted with hydraulic equipment to enable leaders to address people from the roof using a sky-lift.

In 2017, BJP had launched the Parivartan Yatras from Saharanpur, Lalitpur, Sonebhadra and Ballia and all of them converged in Lucknow. They were flagged off in 2017 by then BJP president Amit Shah. The Parivartan Yatras had then marked the start of the BJP campaign in Uttar Pradesh that led to a historic NDA win with 325 seats.