Congress To Launch Yatra From Nov 8 To Revive Party In Delhi

Insiders suggest Rahul Gandhi will launch a yatra from Raj Ghat, aiming to reclaim political ground lost to AAP since 2013.

New Delhi:The Congress has sensed an opportunity to regain lost ground in Delhi ahead of the 2025 assembly polls and will launch a yatra across the national capital from November 8 to counter the ruling AAP.

According to party insiders, former party chief Rahul Gandhi is likely to launch the yatra from Raj Ghat, the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi, to reclaim the political space the grand old party lost to debutant AAP in 2013.

During the month-long mass contact programme, party functionaries will cover all 70 assembly segments and will try to win over voter confidence that existed before the 2013 period when former chief minister Sheila Dikshit ruled Delhi for three consecutive terms.

“The Congress has taken a lot of steps to revive the organisation in Delhi over the past months. The voters have seen corruption that took place under the AAP government. The people suffered due to a lack of clean drains, clean River Yamuna, regular drinking water supply and health-care facilities and other civic issues. They remember the previous Congress government and will bring back the party in 2025,” Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav told ETV Bharat.

“They kept pushing deadlines to clean River Yamuna, but did nothing. Earlier, they used to blame stubble burning by farmers in Punjab and Haryana for the spike in pollution in Delhi during November. After they came to power in Punjab, they started blaming Haryana and Uttar Pradesh farmers. Earlier, they said they could not clean Delhi as the BJP had control over municipal corporations. Now they control MCD but still, the city is not clean. Who is responsible for that?” he said.

In a way, the Congress yatra will be a counter to AAP founder and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘Janta ki Adalat’ drive that hopes to counter the BJP by seeking public validation against his arrest in the liquor scam.

The Congress, which had dubbed Kejriwal’s recent move to resign after getting bail and installing confidant Atishi as the Chief Minister as a ‘drama’, plans to take on both rivals.

“Both the AAP and the BJP are two sides of the same coin. They keep targeting each other to deflect public attention from the failures of the Central as well as State governments. We will expose both,” said Yadav.

The yatra, which may be dubbed ‘Nyay Yatra’ and covered on foot by a group of workers, has been remodelled on Rahul Gandhi’s two nationwide yatras earlier, which helped the party revive voter connections across the country.

Keeping that in mind, the yatra teams will walk through assembly segments during the day holding interactions with the voters and highlighting the failures of the state government. They will spend the night in tents in that area. All the senior leaders will take part in the yatra, said party insiders.

The Congress was pushed to the margins in Delhi in the 2013 assembly polls after the debutant AAP rode to power on the huge public response to activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement in 2011 against the then UPA government at the Centre. Since then, the fight in Delhi has been between AAP and BJP.