With the general election in 2024 in mind, senior Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi will kick off the party’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari today covering a distance of 3,500 kilometres in 150 days. Earlier in the day, he paid a visit to his father Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, where the former Prime Minister was killed in a suicide bombing on May 21, 1991.
Tamil Nadu: Rahul Gandhi pays tribute to father Rajiv Gandhi ahead of ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’
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Rahul Gandhi has previously stated that the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ is a ‘Tapasya’ to him to unite the country, alleging social fragmentation and political centralization under BJP rule.
With only a year and a half till the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Congress, which is struggling to stay relevant in the current political scenario, is looking to project Rahul Gandhi as PM candidate from an opposition side which is way too fragmented with leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and even Arvind Kejriwal wanting to be Prime Minister.
Congress Party itself is breaking apart
In fact, members of his own party are unwilling to accept him as a leader, except for a few sycophants. All of the prominent leaders who have broken away from the Congress, including Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal, have expressed their displeasure with the party leadership. This is why the party is looking at ‘reinventing’ itself via the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’. Except, the problem is, that they have roped in some of the notorious elements who have nothing but ‘Bharat Todo’ (break India) in their minds and hearts.
It is also ironic that Rahul Gandhi who cannot even ‘Jodo’ (unify) his own party, is pretending to unify a country. In recent months, several senior Congress leaders have resigned. Amarinder Singh floated their own parties, and veterans like Ghulam Nabi Azad have openly voiced their discontent at the abject failure of the Gandhi family to lead the party.
Congress to do ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ with backing from ambassadors of ‘Bharat Todo’ ideology
About 150 left-leaning ‘activists’ and so-called socialists including Yogendra Yadav, Aruna Rai, Medha Patkar, and PV Rajagopal, Devenura Mahadev, Ali Anwar, Dr. Sunilam, Bezwada Wilson will join Rahul Gandhi in this ‘Bharat Jodo’ yatra. Medha Patkar, who stalled developmental projects in Gujarat and left people there thirsty for decades because of the farce that ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ has been, will also be joining Rahul Gandhi.
Yogendra Yadav, a professional protestor who decides his cause for protest as per flavour of the season, will also be participating. It must be noted that Yadav was at the forefront of year-long ‘farmer’ protests against the new agriculture laws where ‘protestors’ from Punjab, mostly, and political activists, blocked the national capital highways and choked Delhi for a year. There were reports of Khalistani elements supporting these protests. The new laws would have given more choice to farmers to sell their crops, but the ‘protestors’ were against the same.
These ‘protests’ got tacit support from opposition political parties, predominantly Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party and Congress. This makes one wonder if the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ which has a cavalcade of over 60 ‘containers’ fully equipped with bathrooms and beds and air conditioners, yet another way to block the highways leading to the capital.
Recently, when Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi were called in by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in the National Herald scam, Congress workers had taken to streets and protested, sometimes violently. Somehow, the Congress workers cannot fathom having their Dear Leaders being questioned by investigative agencies even when they claim innocence.
During ‘farmer’ protests, on 26 January 2021, on Republic Day, the ‘farmers’ had held a tractor rally that culminated into riots and the Red Fort, where the Prime Minister gives the Independence Day address, was attacked. Yogendra Yadav was at the forefront of organising these protests. Now that he has extended his services to the new ’cause’, one wonders what the 60-container strong cavalcade would lead to. And how the law and order situation is taken care of.
