Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during his party's ongoing Voter Adhikar Yatra' in Bihar.
Credit: X/@INCIndia
Patna: I.N.D.I.A bloc’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar will culminate on Monday with Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and other leaders marching from Gandhi Maidan to Ambedkar statute here with a vow to resist “vote chori” (vote theft) and setting the stage for next phase of poll campaigning.
This will be the second ‘padayatra’ in Patna in less than two months – the first being the march to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office on July 9 – against the SIR by the Opposition camp with top leaders in attendance. In Delhi, the joint Opposition had marched to the Election Commission on August 11.
The initial plan was to hold a rally at the iconic Gandhi Maidan inviting all I.N.D.I.A leaders, but it was changed to 'Gandhi se Ambedkar' padayatra, as the parties felt a march would be more effective after reviewing the response the ‘yatra’ received while traversing around 1,300 km across 110 Assembly seats in 25 districts.
The assessment in the I.N.D.I.A bloc is that the campaign depicting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar as a vehicle for the “vote theft” by the ruling BJP has hit a chord with the people and they could weave around other “people’s issues” around it.
“For a state that has seen historic deprivation and hardships, the threat of one true power – the right to vote – being stolen was unimaginable. The fear they had in their hearts needed comforting, and the ‘yatra’ came in as a ray of hope against the blatant destruction of democracy being orchestrated in the name of SIR,” Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal said.
For the ‘Maha Gadbandhan’, as the I.N.D.I.A bloc is known in Bihar, the yatra has not only been a platform for connecting with the people but also for cementing the relationship between cadres of various constituents, erasing mistrust and one-upmanship in their areas of influence.
While Rahul, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, remains the mascot of the two-week long ‘yatra’ that started on August 17 from Sasaram, top leaders travelling together for almost two weeks has helped in better coordination and communication as well as controlling the narrative.
Alliance managers are happy that the chemistry between the leaders, which is not limited to Rahul and Tejashwi, will be useful in the coming days when the parties sit together to finalise the tricky issue of seat sharing. Sources said special care was taken to ensure that all partners are given adequate space.
What the ‘yatra’ did to the bloc, as a senior leader put it, is that cadres have started cooperating and acting in coordination on the ground. The campaign also brought the JD(U)-BJP combine on the line of fire.
While senior Opposition leaders like MK Stalin and Akhilesh Yadav as well as Congress Chief Ministers Siddaramaiah (Karnataka) and A Revanth Reddy (Telangana) have already joined the ‘yatra’, other leaders like MA Baby, D Raja, and Sanjay Raut among others will join the Patna leg of the campaign.
Once the yatra concludes, the party managers will be back to designing the next phase of campaign that will extend till the announcement of the poll schedule. During this period, the parties are expected to finalise the manifesto and campaign themes that will include unemployment, law and order, debt incurred by families, and farmers’ issues, among others.
For the Congress, the Bihar ‘yatra’ has helped it in the national projection of its ‘vote theft’ campaign. The BJP has acknowledged the Congress plan and has now tasked its leaders to counter the campaign even as the Opposition managers claim that the ruling party’s counter has not been effective so far.