Haryana Chief Minister and BJP leader Nayab Singh Saini will visit Faridkot on Jattvibeday to address a Babaria (Bawariya) Samaj Sammelan, amid the party’s push to expand its footprint in this part of the Malwa region ahead of state poll early next year.The BJP on Saturday launched a special campaign in Faridkot to distribute the sacred soil from Varanasi — the birthplace of Guru Ravidas.The campaign is being held to mark the 650th birth anniversary of Guru Ravidas.After visiting Kotkapura and Faridkot towns on Jattvibeday, Saini’s visit will focus on the Sadiq belt and adjoining rural pockets of Faridkot, which have a concentrated Babaria community population and are seen as a decisive voting bloc in the Malwa region.Senior state BJP leaders and community heads are expected to attend the BJP events. Party strategists see Saini, an OBC leader who led the BJP to a third consecutive term in Haryana, as a link to the community given his familiarity with regional dialects, said party insiders.The visit forms part of the BJP’s broader social engineering strategy in the state, under which the party has been courting Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and marginalised communities to build a rural voter base outside its traditional urban strongholds.District BJP president Gaurav Kakkar said that sacred soil from Varanasi, revered as the birthplace of Guru Ravidas, entered Faridkot through the Jharmari border near Lalru on Saturday morning, marking the start of a six-month commemorative campaign.He said district-level Kalash Yatras carrying the sacred soil would pass through Punjab villages and towns from August 2 to 6, before the campaign expanding to educational institutions and eventually culminated in a nationwide yatra concluding in Varanasi on February 20.