Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Sunday, 7 June 2026 met BJP Gujarat Pradesh President Jagdish Vishwakarma in Ahmedabad to plan a large-scale tree-plantation drive under the 'Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam' campaign, aimed at realising Union Home Minister Amit Shah's vision of making the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency India's greenest parliamentary seat.

Context

Patel's post, written in Gujarati, describes Amit Shah — the sitting Gandhinagar Lok Sabha MP and Union Home and Cooperation Minister — as having a dream: 'deshno sauthee harit Lok Sabha vistar' (the country's greenest Lok Sabha constituency). The Chief Minister noted that tree-plantation work under this vision is already progressing 'very beautifully.'

At the Ahmedabad meeting, Patel and Vishwakarma, along with other party workers, discussed the planning of a 'very large-scale' tree-plantation exercise within the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha limits under the national campaign.

Policy Backdrop

The 'Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam' (Plant a Tree in Your Mother's Name) campaign was launched nationally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on World Environment Day, June 2024, as a citizen-facing afforestation drive to accelerate green cover across India.

Gujarat has a history of complementary state-level programmes, including Van Mahotsav drives and compensatory afforestation tied to industrial projects. The current constituency-level greening push fits a broader BJP pattern in which senior Union ministers set measurable environmental targets for their own parliamentary seats, a model also seen in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Stakeholders and Impact

Residents of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency — which covers Gandhinagar and parts of Ahmedabad district — stand to be the primary beneficiaries of expanded urban and peri-urban green cover. BJP workers are being mobilised as ground-level volunteers for the plantation exercise.

The initiative also carries political salience: visible, large-scale greening of a senior Union minister's constituency reinforces the party's environmental credentials ahead of future electoral cycles and aligns local party activity with a centrally branded scheme.

What's Next

The meeting in Ahmedabad was a planning session; the actual large-scale plantation event is expected to be organised subsequently within the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha area. Independent assessments of sapling survival rates and any formal declaration of Gandhinagar as India's 'greenest' Lok Sabha seat would be key milestones to watch in coming months.

If the model proves successful, it could be replicated across other BJP-held constituencies seeking to combine grassroots party mobilisation with measurable environmental outcomes.