Rahul yatra renamed as Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra

New Delhi: Senior Congress leaders from across the country met here on Thursday to discuss their strategy for the coming Lok Sabha elections, seat-sharing and preparations for Rahul Gandhi’s coming Manipur to Maharashtra yatra beginning January 14, which was renamed on Thursday as the “Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra”, that will cover 15 states, including Arunachal Pradesh.

This was announced by AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh after a meeting  of party general secretaries, state in-charges, state unit chiefs and Congress Legislature Party leaders chaired by party president Mallikarjun Kharge at the AICC headquarters here. Earlier, it was named Bharat Nyay Yatra.

After the meeting, the Congress released the route map of the 66-day “Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra”, which will cover 110 districts in 15 states. It will start from Imphal in Manipur on January 14 and end in Mumbai. Ramesh said that the Congress has invited all I.N.D.I.A. bloc leaders to participate in this yatra and pointed out that invitations were being sent out. This will be a hybrid yatra, with part of it by bus and the rest on foot.

Addressing top leaders of the party, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the BJP is raising emotive issues to hide its failures over 10 years in power at the Centre. Noting that all the BJP’s attacks were on the Congress and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, he said: "The NDA remains only in name while the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has major grassroots parties that have a strong cadre, base and ideology." Accusing the Narendra Modi government of continuously trying to ignore the contribution of the Congress towards creating a modern India, he said: “We have to give them a concrete answer". He asked the party cadre to forever remember the contributions made by the Congress in the foundation of parliamentary democracy and modern India.

Earlier on Thursday, Y.S. Sharmila, the daughter of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy and founder of YSR Telangana Party, joined the Congress. The Congress had been negotiating with Sharmila over the past one year and she was earlier scheduled to join at a rally in Hyderabad in September. “But negotiations could not be finished in time,” a senior leader said. Her entry will help the Congress stake claim to Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s legacy — a two-term chief minister who died in a tragic helicopter accident in 2008.