The excitement in the run up to the much-hyped Ekta Yatra to Lal Chowk ended on a rather tepid note. And for BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar, the touch down at the Jammu airport was the beginning of the end.
It was also the beginning of a night-long adventure that the three senior leaders might have enjoyed four decades ago — a six-hour stay on the airport tarmac, surviving on paranthas, then a four-hour drive to the Punjab border.
The drama unfolded at the touch down of the chartered flight carrying the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Kumar.
The commander, a Canadian expatriate pilot, was shocked seeing a police officer boarding the plane. He was unaware of the VIP presence and asked his co-pilot if the three were criminals.
As darkness descended, the three high profile ‘guests’ of the Jammu police were made to sit on the tarmac for about six hours and was offered only tea. However, one of the BJP leaders – perhaps aware of the fact that they would not have been allowed to proceed beyond Jammu – came to the rescue of the two colleagues with ‘home made paranthas’.
It was only at 9 pm that the local police set off for a bridge over the Ravi river in Lakhanpur at the Jammu-Punjab border with the BJP leaders in three separate cars. The convoy reached the border around 1 am. It was then that the three had some food.
While the leaders braved the odds on the intervening night of January 25 and 26, it was indeed clear that they would face resistance from the onset of the yatra.
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The party was upbeat about hoisting the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar and starting a national debate but the hint of a set back came when the Jammu & Kashmir bound train from Karnataka with BJP workers was diverted back to the southern state.
The BJP had paid Rs 64 lakh to the railway ministry for arranging a special train from Karnataka to Kashmir to bring its supporters to the Yatra. The train did leave for its destination, but halfway through their journey, the train was stopped at the middle of the night when the passengers were fast asleep and the train was diverted.
The party is considering taking legal action against the authorities for “hijacking” the train and with it, their plan.
On January 26, BJP had planned to address a public rally near the Punjab border. There was no arrangement for food. Swaraj, Jaitley and Kumar made phone calls to their homes to send more paranthas and pickles through party workers.
In between addressing the gathering of party workers, the three leaders took turns to go backstage and eat the paranthas. Then, they courted arrest along with hundred other supporters.