On its twelfth day, the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ was halted upon its arrival from Assam to Bakshirhat in the Cooch Behar region of northern West Bengal. Rahul Gandhi reached here on the morning of 25th January with the yatra and then departed for Delhi in the evening on a two-day break. The yatra won’t move forward on the 26th and 27th of January and is scheduled to proceed through Siliguri on the 28th of January.
However, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government has denied them permission to enter the region. According to the administration, the decision was taken because an examination is set to take place on the same date.
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The Congress had announced a full-day program for the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra,’ but Rahul Gandhi left for Delhi after holding a small public meeting at Bakshirhat and a road show at the district headquarters. Speaking at these programs, he addressed ALL India Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo’s declaration to fight the upcoming Lok Sabha election alone and claimed that the I.N.D.I. Alliance would come together to oppose the injustices committed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
TMC will not be a part of Rahul Gandhi’s Yatra. ‘They did not have the courtesy to inform me’, says Mamata
The Assam Congress presented the yatra flag to West Bengal Congress head Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury amid the cheers of Congress workers. The districts of Birbhum, Uttar Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Uttar Dinajpur, Malda, and Alipurduar will all be covered by the yatra. More importantly, the yatra has been rearranged to swiftly travel through the northern districts before entering neighboring Bihar on 29th January to ensure that it only stays in West Bengal for a short while.
The TMC has stated that the will not be a part of the Yatra in Bengal.
However, it is expected to return to the state the following week to visit the historic Congress strongholds of Malda and Murshidabad. The abrupt shift is believed to be a response from Rahul Gandhi and the Congress to Mamata Banerjee who decided to part ways with the opposition bloc. In addition to ruling out a seat-sharing agreement for the general election in April or May, she revealed that her party is reevaluating its membership in the alliance.
“They did not even bother to inform me that they would be coming to West Bengal as a matter of courtesy even though I am a part of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc. So there is no relation with me as far as Bengal is concerned,” the TMC chief had charged.
The reorganisation in the yatra is perceived as an effort to buy Rahul Gandhi and the party some time to resolve the various challenges with her. TMC severed ties with Congress as a result of state unit president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s persistent criticism of the chief minister of West Bengal.
Interestingly, left-wing parties including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which is part of the opposition coalition are going to join the yatra in West Bengal.
The division among the I.N.D.I. Alliance has notably widened and become more apparent since the start of the yatra. The first unexpected statement came from the TMC which stated that the party would contest the general election in West Bengal alone. Soon thereafter, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann proclaimed that the Aam Aadmi Party would follow suit in Punjab. Rahul Gandhi and his ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ are travelling over 6700 kilometres from Mumbai to Manipur as part of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
