Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a one-day visit to poll-bound Kerala on March 11 ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections. The visit comes just days after the Union Cabinet approved the proposal to change the state’s name to ‘Keralam’.
PM Modi is expected to take part in three events in Kochi, the state’s largest city and financial centre. He is expected to participate in the All Kerala Dheevara Conference at Marine Drive. PM Modi will also inaugurate multiple railway projects in the city before addressing a National Democratic Alliance rally at Kaloor stadium in the evening. The PM is likely to participate in a small roadshow before the rally, where over 40,000 supporters are expected to gather.
This will be the Prime Minister’s first visit to Kerala after the Union Cabinet on February 25 approved changing the name of the southern state to ‘Keralam’. The move, coinciding with the Assembly polls this year, followed a unanimously passed Assembly resolution in June 2024, urging the central government to officially change the state’s name.
During his last visit to the southern state, PM Modi laid the foundation stone for the CSIR-NIIST Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Hub and a state-of-the-art Radiosurgery Centre at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram. He flagged off four new train services and launched the PM SVANidhi Credit Card, which aims for financial inclusion of street vendors.
Kerala will vote along with Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry and West Bengal in April-May this year. Currently, the Bharatiya Janata Party has no MLAs in the 140-member Kerala Assembly. However, the saffron party pulled off a major victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when popular Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi won the Thrissur seat by a margin of over 74,000 votes. This was the BJP’s first-ever Lok Sabha victory in the traditionally Congress-Left Front state.
(With inputs from PTI)
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