Baripada: Baripada town has turned into a fortress with heavy deployment of security and police personnel ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday.
Seventy platoons of police personnel were pressed into service. A number of BJP heavyweights including petroleum, oil and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Union tribal affairs minister Jual Oram will attend the meeting.
The party has planned to draw 1.5 lakh party workers from five organisational districts to the meeting so as to make a show of its strength ahead of the 2019 polls.
Odisha Prabhari Arun Singh and state BJP president Basant Panda have been looking after the preparations for the meeting to be held at Chhoupadia.
In view of heavy traffic, police have made arrangement of traffic control in the town. The Prime Minister will land between 1.30 pm and 2 pm in Baripada in a helicopter after a meeting at Jharkhand.
He will inaugurate and lay foundation stones for a number of welfare schemes and projects funded by the petroleum, oil and natural gas ministry, Union surface and transport ministry, the railways and the ministry of culture in Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak, Keonjhar and Jajpur.
PNN