 "bharat jodo")
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will embark on a 67-day east-to-west ‘Bharat Nyaya Yatra’ from Manipur on January 14, an outreach programme aimed at connecting with common people and galvanising party workers ahead of the key 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The 6,200-km yatra, beginning almost a year after Gandhi’s south-to-north walkathon, will cover 85 districts in 14 states. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge will flag off the yatra in Imphal. It will conclude on March 20, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections set to be held next year.
Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp
Unlike the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, during which Gandhi walked 4,080 kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, the former Congress chief and his associates will undertake this journey on a bus, interspersed with covering short stretches on foot. He would interact with party workers and common people this time, sources said.
Congress General Secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh said Gandhi would interact with people to understand their livelihood issues, such as price rise and unemployment, and assure them of the party’s commitment to delivering economic, social, and political justice. In a post on X, Ramesh said while the earlier yatra was anchored on the Preamble's pillars of "liberty, equality, and fraternity", the ‘Bharat Nyaya Yatra’ is rooted in the Preamble's very first pillar of justice — social, economic and political.
Congress General Secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal said the yatra would not impact the election preparedness of the Congress. The party will put in place a separate system in New Delhi to look at its election readiness for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Even though it’s a minority view, some in the party expressed misgivings that Gandhi should instead focus on campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls, which are likely to be announced in the first week of March. The yatra could also see Gandhi and other leaders attending public rallies. Other political allies of the party are likely to take part in it. Venugopal said the reason the party picked Manipur was to ‘heal the wounds’ of the people of the state who have witnessed ethnic strife.
More From This Section
The yatra will cover four states from the northeast — Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Assam. The Congress has lost space to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Manipur and Assam and other regional parties in Nagaland and Meghalaya.
Hopeful of an alliance with the ruling Trinamool Congress, the yatra will enter West Bengal, following which it will cover Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. The Congress lost in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan in the recent Assembly polls but commanded a sizeable vote share.
The BJP termed the yatra mere sloganeering and said the party cannot fool people. Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has provided justice to the people of India, who had faced all kinds of injustice during the Congress rule.
The Congress will launch its Lok Sabha poll campaign at its ‘Hain Taiyyar Hum’ rally in Nagpur on its foundation day on December 28. Kharge and former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi will address the rally. Nagpur is home to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s headquarters and also ‘Deekshabhoomi’, where B R Ambedkar embraced Buddhism.
The 136-day ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ march covered 4,081 kilometres, traversing 75 districts and 76 Lok Sabha constituencies across 12 states and two Union Territories. During the yatra, Gandhi addressed 12 public meetings, more than 100 street-corner meetings, and 13 press conferences. He held more than 275 planned walking interactions and over 100 sitting interactions.
