Bhubaneswar: BJP national president Amit Shah will visit Odisha twice for party programmes rescheduled on January 29 and February 3 in Cuttack and Puri, respectively. Mr Shah will address a public rally at Kulia in Cuttack district on January 29 .

Earlier, his Cuttack visit scheduled on January 18 was cancelled after he suffered from swine flu and admitted to the AIIMS in New Delhi.

Party sources said that Mr Shah will visit the state twice in two consecutive months. While he will attend the public rally on January 29 at Kulia, he is scheduled to visit again on February 3 to attend the party’s two-day mega tribal convention scheduled at Puri. “The BJP supremo will address the huge gathering at the national convention on February 3,” informed Odisha Janjati Morcha President and MLA Rabi Nayak on Tuesday.

Earlier, the rally was scheduled to be held in Bhubaneswar. However, the plan was changed by the party and rescheduled for Puri.

“Lord Jagannath is the deity of Odisha as well as the tribals. Initially, the Lord was being worshiped by the tribal king Biswa-basu as the ‘Nilamadhaba. Therefore, we decided to hold the mega tribal rally in Puri,”  Mr Nayak said.

Over 5,000 representatives of tribal communities, along with the tribal MLAs and MPs from across the country, will join the convention.

Notably, Puri has become the focus for both the BJP and BJD ahead of the elections. The BJP’s programme was changed in the last moment in view of BJD’s farmers’ rally scheduled on January 25 in Puri.