Indian opposition leader to embark on 6,500km tour to attract voters

Rahul Gandhi, the prominent leader of India’s oldest political party, the Congress, is set to undertake a nationwide journey as the opposition seeks to challenge Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in next year’s general election. 

Gandhi’s upcoming ‘Bharat Nyay Yatra’ (loosely translated as ‘Justice for India Tour’) was announced by his party on Wednesday.

During the journey, the politician will “interact with youth, women, and marginalized people,” Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal said. The 6,200km ‘yatra’ will take Gandhi from the east of the country to the west, covering 14 states including Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.

Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Congress Party, will signal the start of the journey on January 14 from Imphal, the capital of the northeastern Manipur state, bordering Myanmar. It will conclude in Mumbai, India’s financial capital on the western coast, on March 20.

It will be Gandhi’s second political pilgrimage. The previous one, ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ (‘Join India Journey’), was a five-month foot march across the country between September 2022 and January 2023, during which he covered almost 4,000km from Kanyakumari, India’s southernmost point, to Kashmir, the northernmost territory.

Unlike the previous ‘yatra’, the upcoming rally will be undertaken by bus, although stretches of it will be covered on foot, the Congress leadership said.

Manipur, the starting point of the new rally, has been in the headlines since May after violent ethnic clashes erupted in the state. The Kuki and Zomi tribal communities, who live in the hills, have protested against the demands of the Meitei people, a majority that lives in the Imphal Valley, for special status under India’s constitution.

Explaining the Congress leader’s decision to start his journey from Manipur, Venugopal said: “Without Manipur, how can we do a tour? We have to try to heal the pain of the people of Manipur.”

Gandhi, who has repeatedly targeted Modi over his alleged “silence” on the ethnic violence, visited Manipur in June at the height of tensions to meet people affected by the conflict.  Modi eventually broke his silence on the Manipur violence on July 20, after a video of two women being paraded naked by a mob amid violent clashes went viral, causing outrage across the country.

Modi said the incident was “shameful for any civilized nation” and called for peace in the strife-torn state in subsequent months, including at parliament during a debate on a no-confidence motion requested by the Congress. He also vowed that “justice will be delivered.”

Rahul Gandhi, the son of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and former Congress President Sonia Gandhi, was touted as a candidate for prime minister in India’s last national election, held in 2019. The Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the vote in a landslide, securing a second term for its leader.

Weeks after the crushing election defeat, Gandhi, who was president of the Congress at the time, stepped down from his position, taking responsibility for the defeat. Gandhi’s first ‘yatra’ had an impact during the following regional polls. The Congress defeated the BJP in key election contests in Himachal Pradesh in November 2022 and Karnataka in May 2023.

However, in the latest polls held in November this year, the BJP made a comeback by clinching regional elections in three states out of five, ousting the Congress in two of those. The Congress could only secure a win in Telangana state in southern India, which had been ruled by the regional party Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) since 2014.

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