Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s second phase of Bharat Jodo Yatra, which is set to begin on 14 January, has generated some level of scepticism due to its timing among party members and political parties which have come around to join hands with the grand old party.
The yatra that will start from Manipur and cover 6,200 km and 14 states will end in Mumbai on 20 March. It is understood that by that time Rahul and his team enters Mumbai, the Election Commission of India would have announced the general election poll schedule.
According to party leaders and alliance members, the focus of the Congress, being the largest party, should have been on finalising the seat sharing details and candidates selection, but now its attention is focused on the yatra.
“By the time the yatra ends, the first phase of the election is likely to be three weeks away. Ideally, Rahul’s focus should have been to sort the major issues like seat distribution before he embarked on the yatra. It has been more than 200 days since we met in Patna last year for the first meeting and till now we have virtually reached nowhere as far as taking hard decisions are concerned.
Today Congress declared its observers for 500 parliamentary seats, earlier one of our allies (JDU) on its own announced a couple of candidates for the Lok Sabha seats without taking any of us into confidence. In West Bengal, both Congress and TMC leaders are behaving like foes rather than allies,” a senior party leader belonging to one of the 28 parties who constitute the I.N.D.I.A bloc, while requesting anonymity, told the Daily Guardian.
Earlier, JDU national spokesperson KC Tyagi has raised concerns over delay in taking decisions on the part of Congress and stated that the alliance was running out of time and ideas.Tyagi had questioned the timing of the yatra when everything in the alliance within the alliance was in a ‘confused’ state.
According to a senior Congress functionary, the resources and focus of the top Congress leaders was now going to be more aligned to ensure that Rahul’s yatra, like the previous yatra, turns out to be a ‘success’.
“Our top leadership, from across states, organizational post holders, will be more concerned about registering their presence in front of Rahul and to make themselves visible in the yatra. This is definitely going to affect our poll preparations for the general elections which are now less than 3 months away,” he told the Daily Guardian.
According to Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge, the party will talk about the “societal, economic and political” issues with the public through this ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’.
“We will take this opportunity to create public awareness on issues related to inflation, unemployment, farmers’ issues, poor condition of labourers, the increasing gap between rich and poor and caste census,” Kharge had said while announcing the details of the yatra while adding that “During the yatra, Rahul ji will talk to various sections of the society and organizations and discuss solutions to their problems.”
Rahul had announced this yatra in 2022 to spread the message of oneness in the society which he called was facing ‘hatred and anger’. The said yatra was also started to galvanize the party workers and make the Congress ‘s presence felt among the voters.
Congress supporters would like to believe that the yatra played a crucial role in the success that the party got in the Karnataka assembly elections. However, few within the party don’t agree with that assessment.
“Karnataka was won because of the anger against the ruling BJP government and the internal fights between the BJP leaders. If there was no yatra, then too we would have won there. Secondly, any such perception of the yatra making an ever lasting deep impact among the psyche of the voters should be considered while taking into consideration the elections results of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
The simple point is the yatra will not serve any electoral benefits for us and yes, it is taking place at a time when we should have focused on other much more important issues,” a party general secretary told the Daily Guardian.