The Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra will enter Hindi heartland through Bodarli village in Madhya Pradesh’s Burhanpur on Wednesday morning where the Congress’ main political and electoral enemy is the BJP, which has an upper hand at present in the region.
In Madhya Pradesh, where the yatra exits likely on December 4-5, the yatra will cover seven districts, including Indore and Ujjain, and would see Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi joining the Kanyakumari to Kashmir yatra to rejuvenate the party on Wednesday for the first time and will be with the yatra for “a few days”. She had earlier planned to join the yatra in Karnataka and Telangana but could not due to other engagements.
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Rahul on November 26 – the day the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution in 1949 – will be in Mhow, the birthplace of BR Ambedkar. He will also have an extensive tour of Indore district and will hold a press conference on November 29 followed by a rally in Ujjain the next day.
In Ujjain, Rahul is likely to visit the ‘Mahakal’ temple, Besides on November 25, he may also visit Omkareshwar temple in Khandwa district.
The yatra route is carefully designed to send clear political messages in a state where the Congress lost power after emerging on top in the 2018 polls due to defections led by Jyotiraditya Scindia. In the 2019 general elections while BJP rose from 109 to 130 in an Assembly of 230 MLAs, it bagged 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats, leaving just one to Congress.
From Madhya Pradesh, the yatra will enter Rajasthan, another state where the Congress is in direct contest with the BJP. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are going to Assembly elections late next year.
Earlier on November 14, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party’s Task Force 2024 members sat with the committee coordinating Bharat Jodo Yatra to review the success of the yatra so far and the preparations for the programme in north India. The meeting had then decided to be open to suggestions from state units to tweak the route.
With the success of the yatra and demand from other state units, the Congress is now contemplating a similar yatra from the west to east.
Also, five state level yatras – three of them in Odisha, Assam and Tripura – are planned. The yatras in West Bengal and Bihar will start on December 28.
Sources said in Bihar, the yatra will cover 17 districts, mainly in central and south Bihar. At the same time in 21 districts where the main state yatra is not covering, there will be district level yatras. These district level yatras will join the main yatra in Vaishali.
This will cover the northern parts of Bihar, sources added.
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