After Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Party President JP Nadda- Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath is all set to push the campaign for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls.

The party with only three assembly seats in 2016 is likely to give a tough fight to the ruling party All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), especially with a procession of new entrants from TMC crossing over and queering the pitch for old-timers.

Days after the Election Commission announced the poll dates, Adityanath is the first BJP stalwart to hold a rally in the poll-bound state. He will address the citizens of Malda district on Tuesday. As BJP is trying to keep a hold of 54 seats of North Bengal to make the contest easier, senior BJP leaders like Amit Shah visited Cochbehar and JP Nadda visited Malda a few days back to have lunch with the farmers.

In Malda there are 12 assembly seats, where voting will be held on 26 and 29 April. After the poll dates were announced, Babul Supriyo, Sayantan Basu and Arjun Singh have started campaigning heavily, while TMC and other opposition parties have claimed that BJP has failed to pull a crowd in parivartan yatra.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, BJP performed exceptionally well in Gajol district, Habibpur and Malda as well. Most of these areas comprise are Hindu-majority voters and the party is trying to woo them especially from minority-dominated areas in the state. Another important reason to select Malda for this rally is that BJP is making it a center point to send messages to the adjacent districts like Balurghat, Malda North, Raiganj.

Adityanath in his first public rally is going to raise issues like migrant workers’ plight, corruption, love jihad besides other relevant matters. He will also highlight achievements of BJP governments in his state as well as at the Centre, including the construction of the long-pending Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

From being nearly non-existent in Bengal, BJP has emerged as a major political force during 2019 polls. The party bagged 18 of the 42 Parliamentary seats and the contest for 294-seater Assembly is likely to be a bipolar battle between the BJP and TMC this time.