‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’: Ashwini Vaishnaw’s outreach visit this week to cover KBK region

The Union Minister would meet citizens’ associations and intellectuals, apart from BJP party cadres

With Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Minister in the Narendra Modi government with Railways, Communications and Electronics, and Information Technology portfolios, scheduled to criss-cross Odisha’s Koraput, Balangir and Kalahandi (KBK) region this week, the unsettled debate on poverty has come under sharp focus yet again. As per the itinerary of Mr. Vaishnaw’s whirlwind outreach visit, he would attend 115 meetings in six Lok Sabha constituencies in seven districts of undivided Koraput, Balangir and Kalahandi that formed the KBK region. Though the visit is part of the ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ planned by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to introduce its new Central Ministers to the people, it assumes importance ahead of panchayat polls in the State in which both Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal and its principal challenger BJP will be locked in a keen contest. The next rural polls are scheduled in early 2022.