Length equals depth in Yatras — mostly

1,200 km

Between April 6 and June 1, 2022, the Congress held a 1,000-km ‘Azadi Gaurav Yatra’, starting from Gandhi Ashram in Gujarat and ending at Raj Ghat in Delhi, covering Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan. The yatra was meant to mark 75 years of India’s Independence and underline the Congress’s contribution to it, as the Modi government pushed ahead with Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.

‘1.32 lakh km’

At an event in Gujarat earlier this year, state BJP chief C R Paatil claimed to have travelled 1.32 lakh km over the past two years, participating in 841 functions across the state. “It takes around 40,000 km to complete one orbit of the globe. Through the tour, I covered 33 districts and 7 metropolitan cities,” Paatil, hoping to stand out in the crowded BJP state hierarchy, said.

* 12,000 km

In the run-up to the February-March Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress announced a “Pratigya Yatra” covering 12,000 km across the state’s 403 constituencies. Flagged off by Priyanka Gandhi, the yatra was held in phases, and didn’t help the Congress’s fortunes much in the polls that followed. The party won two seats, and leaders complain that Priyanka seems to have lost interest in the state.

* 19,567 km

In August 2021, the BJP launched a five-day “Jan Ashirwad Yatra”, as part of which 39 Union ministers set out to cover 22 states, with the stated ambition of travelling over 19,567 km. The ostensible purpose was to “introduce” ministers to people following the just-held reshuffle of the Modi Cabinet. The party claimed the yatra was a “huge success”.

* 3,648 km

Between November 2017 and January 2019, YSRCP chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy undertook a “Praja Sankalpa Yatra” covering 3,648 km by foot across the state in 341 days. The YSRCP swept the polls in April that year, winning 151 of the 175 seats, with the incumbent TDP winning just 23 seats.

Jagan was following in his late father Y Rajasekhar Reddy’s footsteps, who had undertaken a 1,400-km padyatra in April 2003, that brought the Congress to power the next year.

* 3,000 km

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh held a ‘Narmada Parikrama’ Yatra in 2017, over a distance of 3,000 km. He said the six-month long Parikrama was “entirely a religious and spiritual exercise. Nothing political should be read into it”. While Digvijaya clearly hoped the high-optics initiative would pay off politically in the state, it didn’t improve his own prospects much.

* 10,000 km

The distance BJP leader L K Advani’s “Rath Yatra”, launched in 1990, was to cover to reach Ayodhya on October 30. It ended with his arrest in Bihar on October 19, but the BJP never looked back.

* Over 4,000 km

In 1983, former prime minister Chandra Shekhar went on a padyatra from Kanyakumari to Delhi, covering 4,000-odd km in four months, clocking 25 km a day as per reports. That’s about the pace of Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.

As per a report in India Today at the time, ‘… over 4,000 km and nearly six months later when Janata Party President Chandra Shekhar reached New Delhi last week — his craggy face more care-worn, his calloused and blistered feet bandaged — the reception was tumultuous.’

The national limelight might have been one of the factors that propelled him to the post of Prime Minister in 1990, for a period of seven months, leading a minority government.

* 40,000 km

In 1982, actor-turned-politician and TDP supremo N T Rama Rao went on a ‘Chaitanya Ratham’ rally covering nearly 40,000 km and touring the entire state four times in nine months. In 1983, he swept the state elections in a historic win.