Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has cancelled the second leg of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Jharkhand to join the farmers’ protest, the party leadership in the state said on Wednesday. The first leg of the Yatra in Jharkhand began on February 3 and went on till February 5, with Rahul travelling from Pakur, Godda and Dhanbad to Ramgarh and Ranchi before moving to Odisha. In the second phase, on Wednesday, Rahul was expected to travel through Palamu and Garhwa districts and address people on multiple issues, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. “We are hearing he may go to Rajasthan for the filing of Sonia Gandhi’s nomination and then head for the farmers’ protest,” Jharkhand Congress president Rajesh Thakur said earlier. Rahul later joined Sonia Gandhi as she filed her nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls from Rajasthan. Farmers from Punjab have begun a ‘Dilli Chalo’ march to press for several pending demands, including a legal guarantee on minimum support price. The farmers have reached the Shambhu border where tear gas shells have been lobbed at them to prevent their entry into Haryana. In the first phase of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Rahul had promised justice for farmers, Thakur said. “The central government is trying its best to crush the farmers, the backbone of the country, but the Congress had stood with the farmers in every struggle earlier and is standing with them even today,” Thakur added. Congress’s Ranchi Mahanagar president Kumar Raja said that Rahul Gandhi said the Sarna Code would be implemented if the Congress came to power. Tribal community leaders and parties, including the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, have been advocating the need for a separate code for the Sarna faith. Raja said that more than 30,000 people had gathered in Ranchi to hear Rahul speak. “We did not have to even convince people. They thought their leader was coming and they came on foot, on buses, in cars…Gandhi spoke on the implementation of Sarna Code and reviving Heavy Engineering Corporation, a GOI undertaking,” Raja added. In Godda, where the Adani Group has set up a power plant, Rahul Gandhi said that not a single tribal, Dalit, backward or poor person would be found in the management list of Adani’s company. “Therefore, our first step is to conduct a caste census,” Rahul added. Rahul said the Modi government destroyed small traders by implementing GST and demonetisation. “That is why there is severe unemployment in the country. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi and his ministers do not see social and economic injustice in the country,” Rahul said. Later, in Dumka and Deoghar, Gandhi spoke about the “conspiracy” to topple the government in Jharkhand. He said the BJP-RSS tried to topple the government in Jharkhand because they did not want a tribal to remain the chief minister of the state. “These people are attacking democracy and the Constitution, but the Congress and India alliance will never allow the voice of democracy to be suppressed,” Gandhi had said. In Dhanbad, Gandhi walked with the residents who carried coal on their bicycles. “Without walking with them, feeling their burden, their problems cannot be understood. If the life of these young workers slows down, the wheels of building India will also stop,” he said. In Bokaro, Gandhi said Congress was in favour of saving “water, forests and land” and added that the unemployment in the country is at such a peak that it has never been in the last 45 years, yet the “blind and deaf central government” was watching the show and “supporting its capitalist friends”. “If the people of the country are still not alert then it is possible that next time the dictatorial government may not even give us a chance to vote, Modi will work directly and indirectly to benefit his capitalist friends by keeping the youth of the country unemployed,” he had said.
