Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is currently undertaking the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ which is passing through Uttar Pradesh. On Tuesday (20th February), shortly after the Congress scion was granted bail by a Sultanpur court in the 2018 defamation case, he took to X seeking donations for the march.
हम न्याय की लड़ाई लड़ रहे हैं!
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) February 20, 2024
किसानों के लिए MSP की लड़ाई
युवाओं के लिए रोज़गार की लड़ाई
वंचितों के लिए हिस्सेदारी की लड़ाई
जन-जन के लिए लोकतंत्र की लड़ाई
कांग्रेस को डोनेट कर इस लड़ाई को मजबूत बनाएं: https://t.co/ys6Eqpksce
हमारी ताकत इलेक्टोरल बॉण्ड नहीं, आपका बॉण्ड है।
“We are fighting for justice! MSP fight for farmers, fight for employment for youth, fight for a share for the underprivileged, fight for democracy for the people. Strengthen this fight by donating to the Congress: donateinc.net,” he wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Gandhi further took a jibe at the BJP saying, “Our strength is not electoral bond, it is your bond.” ‘RaGa’ shared a link to the donation website for the yatra but there’s a catch to it.
On the homepage, the donations received by the party for the ‘Nyay’ yatra are mentioned along with organisation-wise and region-wise breakup of the donations.
Under top organisations that received the Nyay donations is Congress’s Minority Department which has received the highest donation of Rs 90,82,286.
This is followed by Rs 39,34,266 received by Professionals’ Congress, Rs 24,46,451 received by Youth Congress, Rs 8,92,846 received by Seva Dal and finally, the last and least Rs 8,32,695 for OBC department.
Surprisingly, the OBC department of the party has received the least donations among all Congress organisations especially considering that Rahul Gandhi is often heard telling the backward classes that they have no representation under the Modi government.
The donation page for the yatra requires some basic details of the donor including name, number, state and pin code. Besides this, there is an option to choose which Congress organisation the donor wants to donate to.
Interestingly, the Minority Department has received the most donations. For a party that claims to be the torchbearer of secularism, its resulting donations appear rather unsecular.
The party has collected Rs 22,60,23,580 in online donations on the said website and has collected Rs 5,68,62,853 in total under ‘Donate for Nyay’
The ‘Donate for Desh’ fiasco
In December, the Congress launched an online crowd-funding campaign titled “Donate for Desh”. However, the party’s poorly-planned campaign left it red-faced.
The campaign was announced on 16th December. On the first day of the campaign, the party managed to collect Rs 1.45 crore rupees. Of this, Rs 1.38 lakh were donated by Party President Mallikarjun Kharge.
This shed light on Congress’s own economic downfall while it fails to look inwards and constantly keeps creating fictitious theories to show the Indian economy in bad light even when data fails the grand old party every time.
This was not the only thing wrong with the ‘Donate for Desh’ campaign. Congress failed to secure the online presence of the campaign.
The Congress Party forgot to register the top-level domains (TLDs) for its campaign! Consequently, donatefordesh.com and donatefordesh.org redirected users to the support page of OpIndia and the donate page of BJP respectively.
The party became a massive laughingstock for netizens launching a meme festival online.