 "Rahul Gandhi")
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s 66-day Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Imphal to Mumbai will traverse 110 districts of 15 states, including Arunachal Pradesh, the Congress said on Thursday.
Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said the 6,713 km Yatra, initially called Bharat Nyay Yatra and renamed Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, will travel across 100 Lok Sabha and 337 Assembly constituencies.
Arunachal Pradesh was not part of the initial itinerary of the Yatra, which Ramesh said was because the party was trying to resolve logistical and security issues involved in travelling across the state. The Congress has invited all its INDIA bloc allies and civil society members to participate in the Yatra.
Several of the 110 districts that the Yatra will visit are tribal-dominated, such as in Jharkhand, South Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Odisha. Tribals were a traditional support base of the Congress but have begun to gravitate towards the BJP in recent elections.
Unlike the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which covered over 4,000 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir from September 7, 2022, to January 30, 2023, on foot, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will have Gandhi and his associates travel by bus. The Yatra, which will begin on January 14 and end in Mumbai either on March 20 or 21, will try to cover a distance of 80 km each day, including 8-9 km on foot, where Gandhi will interact with people. He will address at least two small public meetings daily.
The Yatra will spend 11 days in Uttar Pradesh, the most in any state, visiting Varanasi, Prayagraj, Amethi, and Rae Bareli, as well as districts in western Uttar Pradesh. It will spend eight days each in Assam and Jharkhand. Varanasi is the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while members of the Nehru-Gandhi family have represented Amethi and Rae Bareli over the decades. Jawaharlal Nehru represented Phulpur in Prayagraj.
In West Bengal and Bihar, the Yatra will visit districts considered traditional Congress strongholds, such as Murshidabad, the Seemanchal region, and Sasaram, a seat which its Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram and later his daughter Meira Kumar represented in the Lok Sabha.
