JD(U) chief to skip Congress's Bharat Jodo Yatra, says united Opposition needed

JD(U) is sure about Bharat Jodo Yatra will go a long way in helping to formulate joint strategies for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections but its president Rajiv Ranjan 'Lalan Singh' will not fly to Srinagar next Monday to join the culmination of Kanyakumari to Kashmir padayatra owing to other engagements.

As he joined a group of parties like Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, CPI(M) and JD(S) in skipping the January 30 rally, Singh conveyed his inability to attend the “historic event” in a letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge but emphasised that the need of the hour is a "unified Opposition" and that Congress should take "appropriate steps" in this direction.

Kharge had written to presidents of 23 “like-minded” parties inviting them to the Srinagar rally. However, he had not invited parties like AAP, BRS, BJD, Akali Dal, AIUDF and YSR Congress. In the letter sent on Thursday, Singh said as JD(U) president, he was wishing the event "every success" on behalf of the party and its supreme leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. He said he sincerely believes that the yatra has also given an opportunity to "study, experience and sense the mood and anxiety" of the people first-hand, which he was sure will go a long way in "helping us formulate joint strategies" in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

"My party sincerely feels that the need of the hour is a unified Opposition and expects that the Indian National Congress takes appropriate steps in this direction," he said.

Sharing the sentiments Kharge expressed in his letter inviting Singh to the rally, he said there are no two opinions that there is decline in democratic values in the country and the institutions that are supposed to ensure checks and balances on unrestrained executive power are being systematically destroyed."The pace at which the country is fast transforming itself from an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy, to say the least is, frightening," he said but added, he wanted to be present at the "historic event" but he regrets his inability to do as he need to be present at the launching of the party's election campaign in Nagaland on the same day.