Rahul Gandhi will launch the Congress party’s Bharat Jodo padayatra at a massive public meeting in Kanyakumari on September 7 after paying a visit to the memorials of Mahatma Gandhi and former Tamil Nadu CM K Kamaraj on the sea shore.
Gandhi will kickstart his yatra that will pass through a dozen states and two Union Territories before reaching Jammu and Kashmir by walking from the sea shore to the venue of the public meeting, a distance of about 3 km. He will then walk for 20 to 25 kilometers each on September 8, 9, and 10 in Kanyakumari district before the yatra ventures into Kerala the next day.
After walking for 19 days in Kerala, Gandhi will reach Karnataka via the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, where he will spend a day. The Tamil Nadu leg of the yatra will cover nearly 70 km through Kanyakumari district, a source in the know said.
“Rahul ji will address a public meeting on September 7 during which he will highlight the failures of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government on various fronts and also explain the need for a nationwide yatra. The meeting will set the tone for the yatra,” the source said.
From September 8 to 10, Gandhi is expected to visit several villages en route to Kerala and interact with the general public to hear their grievances. “We have designed the yatra in a way that he walks about 20 to 25 km a day which will provide him ample time to interact with people. We are also looking to involve civil society in the yatra. The details of organisations participating in the yatra are being worked out,” a TNCC leader told DH.
TNCC chief K S Alagiri said Gandhi will reach Chennai on September 7 morning to visit his father Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial in Sriperumbudur, 50 km from Chennai, where he was assassinated by a LTTE suicide bomber in 1991.
Before launching the yatra, Gandhi will visit the Mahatma Gandhi Mandapam (memorial) and Kamarajar Mani Mandapam (memorial) in Kanyakumari. The memorials, which were constructed in 1956 and 2000 respectively, are major tourist attractions in the coastal town of Kanyakumari.
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