Bengaluru: According to party sources, Amit Shah, the BJP president, will visit bengaluru, on Jan 3rd, ahead of the two-day Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive committee meeting here from January 20.

While in Bengaluru, he will review the progress of the ongoing membership drive under which the party State unit has been given a target of enrolling 80 lakh members. Shah has reportedly asked the party State unit to expand base at the grassroots-level by enrolling a minimum of 200 members from different communities and cross-sections of society in each of the polling booths. This constitutes 20 to 30 per cent of the entire voter population, as normally a polling booth will have 500 to 800 voters.

His visit is expected to get the party geared for its proposed national office-bearers’ meeting in the city on January 19 and the subsequent national executive and the BJP, which was hitherto busy with Assembly elections to various States, is now getting ready to give full attention to the Congress-ruled Karnataka.

Shah apparently wants to break the caste and religious barrier, in both membership and the party hierarchy, and this could affect the power equations in the party.