Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], March 24 (ANI): Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived at Bengaluru in the early hours of Friday. Shah will attend the Regional Conference on 'Drug Trafficking and National Security' for Southern States/UTs in Bengaluru today.

Th Union Home Minister was received by Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Airport in Bengaluru.

According to Union Ministry of Home Affairs, Shah will focus on aspects like ways to curtail drug trafficking through maritime routes, and stringent punitive action on drug traffickers resulting in zero tolerance in the Regional Conference on 'Drug Trafficking and National Security'.

Other aspects like seamless coordination and cooperation between state and central drug Law Enforcement Agencies and containment of the spread of drug abuse through a concerted awareness program will also be discussed in the conference chaired by the Home Minister. Representatives from five Southern States and three Union Territories (UTs) will be attending the conference, said a Home Ministry statement.

Shah will lay the foundation stone of Sehkar Samrudhi Soudh and inaugurate various development works of the Cooperative Ministry (Karnataka) in Kommaghatta village, Bengaluru.

The Home Minister's visit to the poll-bound state is believed to be a bid to give a further boost to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) campaign efforts in the southern state.

Karnataka, which in Shah's own words is the BJP's gateway to the south, will go to polls in the coming months.

After sounding the poll bugle in the state, BJP has been trying to reach out to various communities by installing statues of famous personalities.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Karnataka on March 25 to inaugurate Whitefield Metro Line and to attend BJP's event in Davanagere.

The visit of Shah is significant amid the party's push to return to power in the key southern state. (ANI)