Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0 will begin on January 14 from Manipur in a nod to the northeastern state that has endured months of ethnic violence.
The 66-day 6,700-km march, now renamed Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, will cover 15 states and over 100 Lok Sabha constituencies, before culminating at Gujarat’s Porbandar, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi was planning to begin the yatra from Arunachal Pradesh earlier.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said they decided to add the word ‘Jodo’ to recreate the impact generated by last year’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
‘The idea of Rahul Gandhi’s Yatra is Justice. The objective is to ensure political, economic and social justice for people of India,’ Mr Ramesh said.
‘In the meeting of all general secretaries, in-charges, PCC chiefs and CLP leaders, it was felt that the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ has become a brand that is embedded in minds of people. We should not lose it,” Ramesh said, referring to the march carried out by Rahul Gandhi in September 2022 from Kanyakumari to Srinagar in January 2023,’ he added.
According to Ramesh, the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ will begin at 12 pm from violence-hit Manipur’s capital Imphal on January 14.
Rahul Gandhi will address the 6,700-km march twice daily over the course of 66 days.
‘Based on the discussions today we finalized routes. We always had Arunachal Pradesh in mind and therefore BJNY will cover 15 states including Arunachal,’ Ramesh said.
The Congress initially had planned the march from Arunachal’s Pasighat to Porbandar. But the situation in Manipur prompted the party leadership to change its plan.
The yatra will cover a distance of 1,000 kilometres in Uttar Pradesh, where the party has just one Lok Sabha MP, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
The yatra will cover 523 kilometres in West Bengal across seven districts in five days.
‘All INDIA parties and civil society organizations will be invited,’ Ramesh said, adding that the march will cover 110 districts in total.
Rahul Gandhi’s earlier ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ achieved mixed result. The Congress suffered its worst defeat in Gujarat, but managed to form the government in Himachal Pradesh.
The grand old party was wiped out in the northern states, but managed to win Karnataka and Telangana in 2023.