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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has yet again tweaked his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’s route and included five districts of west Uttar Pradesh, a region which he had decided to skip following the exit of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) – seen to be influential in the region – from the INDIA bloc.
Congress general secretary in-charge (communications) Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday said the yatra will resume on February 24 from Moradabad, after a two-day break, and head to Sambhal, Aligarh, Hathras and Agra (all in west UP) before moving on to Dholpur in Rajasthan. Sources said Rahul will cover the five districts in a day as he wants to “save time”.
It was also announced that there would be a break in the Yatra from February 26 to March 1, when Rahul will head to Cambridge University in the UK to “fulfil his long-standing commitment” to deliver two special lectures.
The districts in west UP which Rahul will tour have a significant population of Muslims. While Jats are dominant in Moradabad, Dalits make up a key part of the population in Hathras and Agra. Rahul will skip constituencies like Baghpat, Mathura, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina and Amroha, where the RLD is said to be influential. He will not travel to Hamirpur and Jhansi either, which was scheduled earlier.
Moradabad and Sambhal, where the Yatra will pass through, were won by Congress ally Samajwadi Party (SP) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when it fought in a tie-up with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and RLD. The SP has declared sitting MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq as its candidate for Sambhal, while it is yet to name its nominee for the Moradabad seat.
According to the original route, the Yatra was to traverse through Chandauli, Varanasi, Jaunpur, Allahabad, Bhadohi, Pratapgarh, Amethi, Raebareli, Lucknow, Hardoi, Sitapur (all in eastern and central UP) and Bareilly, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambal, Amroha, Aligarh, Badaun, Bulandshahr, and Agra (in western UP).
On February 12, the Congress announced that Rahul had decided to cut short his yatra by skipping the western region of UP. Later, the party said this was done to not inconvenience students, with the board exams starting from February 22.
Congress spokesperson Anshu Awasthi had dismissed talk that the RLD’s hobnobbing with the BJP had led Rahul to curtail his Yatra in the region. “The Congress is not dependent on anyone. It is polite but not helpless,” he had said.
On Wednesday, its sixth day in UP, the Yatra entered Kanpur. It had entered the state from Bihar on February 16 and has since travelled across 11 districts.
Post its resumption on March 2, the Yatra will traverse through Morena, Gwalior, Shivpuri, Guna, Shajapur and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. Rahul will visit the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain, where he had paid obeisance in November 2022 during the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Meanwhile, the BJP lashed out at Rahul on Wednesday for his “drunk youth of Uttar Pradesh” remarks. The Congress leader, in a veiled jibe at Modi, had said he had seen people in Varanasi lying on the road drunk.
Modi represents Varanasi in the Lok Sabha.
“He (Rahul) said the youth of Uttar Pradesh are drunk. Is this the language he should use to talk about the region which was ruled by his family? And for so many years, he and his mother were MPs from?” former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
In a retort to allegations that no one from the OBC or Tribal communities was at the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22 while wealthy people were in attendance, Prasad asked him to stop “insulting” Lord Ram and his devotees. “Rahul Gandhi, stop attacking the faith of the majority of Indian people and using arrogant language for youth,” he said.
