Rahul Gandhi will begin his Bharat Nyay Yatra on January 14th : The Congress Party announced on Wednesday that Rahul Gandhi will lead a 6,200-kilometer-long Bharat Nyay Yatra from India’s northeastern tip to its western shore between January and March, a reiteration of a Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir Bharat Jodo foot march that galvanised workers but produced mixed electoral dividends.
Rahul Gandhi will begin his Bharat Nyay Yatra on January 14th
The yatra, according to Congress national administrator KC Venugopal, would begin on January 14 in violence-torn Manipur and end on March 20 in Mumbai, covering 14 states and 85 districts primarily by bus and on foot, and will conclude just weeks before general elections next summer.
Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra will be covered by the route. In 2022-23, nine of these states were not covered by the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
“It will end in Mumbai on March 20,” Venugopal stated. The yatra will be launched in Imphal by party chairman Mallikarjun Kharge.
Gandhi had been under pressure from his party members to go on another yatra in recent months. On December 21, nearly all members of the Congress Working Committee encouraged the former party head to embark on another cross-country march along the lines of the 4,500km-long Bharat Jodo Yatra, which began in Kanyakumari in September 2022 and finished in Srinagar on January 30. This time, Gandhi will use a bus for much of the journey rather than walking the entire route. Gandhi had previously stated that he would do whatever the party demanded of him.
The yatra comes just weeks after the Congress was humiliated in three important heartland states, failing to retain its administrations in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and failing to unseat the Bharatiya Janata Party in Madhya Pradesh. The party won Telangana with a solid showing, but with only a few months to the general election, its poor performance in north India, which accounts for at least 225 Lok Sabha seats, is cause for concern.
The plan was rejected by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). “…Prime Minister Modi has given nyay to the people of India, whereas Congress, on the one hand, campaigned for gareebi hatao [eradicate poverty] but on the other hand, pushed people further into poverty during its regime… These people play divisive politics, they do not know how to bring the nation together…” Anurag Thakur, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, stated.
The preceding Bharat Jodo Yatra was praised with revitalising Gandhi’s image among ordinary people, social groups, activists, farmers, and women. It also energised the party cadre in numerous states where the organisation had been dormant.
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However, the results of the elections were mixed: the Congress suffered its worst defeat in decades in Gujarat, but won a majority of its own in Himachal Pradesh in December 2022. It won the southern states of Karnataka and Telangana in 2023 elections, but was defeated in north India.
The Bharat Nyay Yatra, according to Congress officials, was planned ahead of the 2024 elections to help ground workers. The yatra is especially significant because the Congress’ past election platforms, which featured welfare initiatives, Hindutva overtures, a statewide caste census, and the brand of leadership, failed to win seats in north India, which will be the primary focus of the yatra. The BJP governs eight of the 14 states that will be covered.
“The Bharat Nyaya Yatra will conclude on March 20.” “This yatra will inspire youth, women, and all marginalised people,” Venugopal remarked. According to Congress general administrator Jairam Ramesh, the yatra will focus on economic, social, and political justice.
Ramesh also stated that the Congress will organise a massive rally in Nagpur on December 28 to commemorate the party’s founding anniversary. The protest, dubbed “Hain Tayyar Hum” (We Are Ready), will sound the starting gun for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
“The Indian National Congress’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, headed by @RahulGandhi, from Kanyakumari on September 7th, 2022 to Srinagar on January 31st, 2023, was grounded in our preamble’s pillars of liberty, equality, and fraternity…The Bharat Nyay Yatra is based on the Preamble’s first pillar of justice: social, economic, and political justice. The persistent attacks on the Constitution will not be tolerated!” Ramesh later tweeted about it.
The Congress had originally planned a yatra from Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh to Porbandar in Gujarat. However, ethnic violence in Manipur since May 3 has resulted in 187 deaths and the displacement of over 50,000 people, prompting the Congress to modify its plans. The Congress and other Opposition parties raised the Manipur matter strongly in Parliament, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah responded to the debate.
Venugopal praised Manipur as an essential component of the North-East, saying the party wants to “try to heal the state’s wounds.”
“This is not a political pilgrimage. We intend to address regular people’s concerns. It would have no effect on election preparations. “We’ll have a separate mechanism [for voting],” he remarked.
