BJP Launches Anti-Drug Yatras Across Punjab Ahead of Assembly Elections

CHANDIGARH: With the Punjab Assembly elections less than five months away, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to reach out to the masses across the state, as the saffron party is starting 12-day statewide anti-drug yatras across all 117 Assembly constituencies from September 18 to 30. The yatras will be flagged off by its national president Nitin Nabin, while top leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah and other Cabinet ministers, will take part in them. The BJP has sought to make drugs, law and order and governance key issues in its preparations for the Assembly polls. The yatra will start simultaneously from four locations in different parts of the state on September 18. One leg will be flagged off from Talwandi Sabo, at Takht Damdama Sahib, one of the five takhts of the Sikhs in the Malwa region of the state. The other will begin from Fatehgarh Sahib, which is associated with the martyrdom of the younger Sahibzadas of Guru Gobind Singh. Thus, these two locations are related to Sikhism. The third yatra will start from the Veer Bhoomi Memorial in Fazilka, which is also in the Malwa region of the state. The site, widely recognised as the Asafwala War Memorial or Shaheedon Ki Samadhi, is a sacred historical site dedicated to the fierce hand-to-hand combat between India and Pakistan and the Indian soldiers who sacrificed their lives defending the strategic border town of Fazilka during the 1971 Indo-Pak War. The fourth will start from the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Memorial at Lakhanpur near Pathankot on the Punjab-Jammu and Kashmir border. Mukherjee was the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and was arrested there in 1953 while attempting to enter J&K without a permit.