Jammu, March 1 : Union Health Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J. P. Nadda on Saturday paid obeisance at the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district.

He was accompanied by his wife, Mallika Nadda, MoS for Personnel Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh, BJP national general secretary and in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir Tarun Chugh and party Jammu and Kashmir unit president Sat Sharma.

Union Minister Nadda prayed at the cave shrine and later reached the Mata Vaishno Devi base camp town of Katra.

He is scheduled to address the concluding session of the two-day workshop of BJP, which began on Friday and has been organised for the 28 MLAs of the party, most of whom are first-time legislators.

The workshop, 'Vidahayak Prashishan Shivir', was jointly inaugurated by BJP national general secretary B. L. Santosh and Sat Sharma at a hotel in Katra.

Party sources said the workshop's focus is to ensure the effective participation of the BJP legislators in the Budget session of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly which starts on March 3 in Jammu.

The BJP won 29 Assembly seats in the 90-member Assembly. All the 28 MLAs of BJP belong to the Jammu division.

The party did not win a single seat out of the 47 Assembly seats in Kashmir for which polls were held last year.

The National Conference (NC), headed by former chief minister Farooq Abdullah, won 42 seats while five independent MLAs also later joined the NC.

Congress won six seats and announced its support to the NC government headed by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah without joining the government.

/IANS