Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the city on Friday for the inauguration of major infrastructure projects in and around the city has come as a boost for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) elections scheduled for December this year.Rehearsal of PM Narinder Modi visit at PEC Sector 14 in Chandigarh on Thursday. (Keshav Singh/HT)This would be the PM’s fourth visit to the city since 2014 and the second after winning the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.It has galvanised the party cadre, which has launched a ‘Swachhta Se Swagat’ (welcome through cleanliness) campaign, to spruce up the city while also seeing it as an opportunity for public outreach before the civic polls.As part of the campaign, senior office-bearers and leaders of the BJP’s Chandigarh unit visited different mandals and wards and carried out cleanliness drives along with party workers.City unit president Jatinder Pal Malhotra, who participated in the drive at Mandal 1, Khuda Alisher, said the PM’s visit has “rekindled an atmosphere of positivity” in the party. “We are sure of sweeping all 35 councillor seats in the December elections,” he said.Mayor Saurabh Joshi said the PM’s presence in the city is evidence of the Centre’s continued investment in the UT.“In 2016, he came with the then French president Francois Hollance and addressed a business summit. Never has the city received such a huge grant of ₹6,500 crore in one go (the projects set to be announced by him on Friday). This visit will definitely boost the prospects of the party in the upcoming MC elections,” said Joshi.The PM is set to inaugurate and lay the foundation stones of development projects worth ₹6,614 crore during his visit. These include the advanced neurosciences centre and the advanced mother and child centre at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. He will also open the IT City-Kurali stretch of NH-205A, a newly opened 31 km, 6-lane access-controlled greenfield corridor which will reduce travel time between Mohali, Kharar and Kurali while providing improved connectivity between Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Other projects to be inaugurated include the Kurukshetra boys hostel and a mess at Punjab Engineering College (PEC) at a cost of ₹39.5 crore, a hostel block at Government College, Sector 46 costing ₹16.6 crore, and 240 police houses at Dhanas estimated at ₹65 crore.Ahead of his visit, the PM tweeted, “It is always wonderful to be in Chandigarh.”Former BJP President Arun Sood said the development of Chandigarh apart, the craze in residents to catch a glimpse of the PM is phenomenal. “The visit has brought a wave of excitement among BJP workers across the tricity. They are all motivated and enthusiastic. People are coming to us and asking if they can just get the opportunity to just see the PM,” he said.Former mayor and BJP councillor Harpreet Kaur Babla said by highlighting central investment in healthcare and infrastructure, it becomes all the more clear that the Centre remains committed to the city’s development. The visit also allows the BJP to reinforce its broader campaign themes of development, governance and strong national leadership. “It’s a message to the people that it is always better to vote for the party which is at the Centre,” she said.A Congress MP & BJP-led MCCurrently, the BJP has a majority in the House. While it was the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that got a majority with 14 seats in the 36-member House in 2021, a number of councillors defected to the saffron party over the years and raised its strength from 12 to 18. This helped the party wrest the mayor’s post in 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026. In January 2024, after a bungled mayoral poll, the Supreme Court had declared the AAP candidate as the winner, the only time it was able to form a mayor.The saffron party, however, lost the Lok Sabha seat in 2024 with Congress’ Manish Tewari defeating the BJP candidate by a razor-thin margin of 2,504 votes.