New Delhi: The Congress on Monday said it will invite former chief ministers like Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav besides RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary during the Uttar Pradesh leg of the Bharat Jodo Yatra to broad base the message of the foot march.
The yatra is on a break from December 25 to January 2 and will resume from New Delhi on January 3 and enter UP the same day. The yatra will crisscross through western UP for three days and enter Haryana on January 5. “We are in the process of working out the dates and logistics internally and with several like-minded parties.
If it is needed, formal invites will be sent to these key leaders soon. We are also trying to involve other smaller parties with the yatra,” former union minister Salman Khurshid, who is UP Coordinator for Bharat Jodo Yatra, told ETV Bharat.
“It is an inclusive yatra for enhancing contacts amongst various people and bringing about a greater sense of understanding. It is not only meant for the Congress party. We are only sponsoring the yatra. The yatra is for all people who are concerned about how India is today. We hope others too will join us and not take it as a political platform,” he said.
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According to Khurshid, the Congress attempt may not be easy and if some political differences need to be resolved for this coming together, they will be sorted out. “We are trying to bring in as many people as possible during the yatra. I have already spoken to OP Rajbhar of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party. If there are any existing angularities, the same will be ironed out,” said Khurshid.
OP Rajbhar is a former BJP ally. According to Khurshid, a former UP Congress chief and a former Lok Sabha MP, the six-regional in charge of Congress in UP recently conducted small yatras across the state to prepare ground for the Rahul Gandhi-led main event.
“There were two purposes behind these local yatras. One to prepare our workers for the main yatra and second to instil confidence in them for the future,” said Khurshid. Rajya Sabha member Pramod Tiwari, who had made the suggestion to rope in the regional parties to Salman Khurshid, said that the local yatras would help the party revive in the coming days.
“UP is a big state. The state unit chief is doing his work while the regional in-charges are doing their work. Earlier, also we had zonal in-charges who played a similar role. I think the preparatory yatras will help strengthen the organization in UP,” Tiwari told ETV Bharat.
The Congress which has been on the margins in UP for decades is hoping to benefit from the yatra goodwill during the short stint that the mass contact program will spend in UP. Hence, an attempt is being made to rally allies, said a party strategist. In the 2022 assembly polls, the Congress tally further dropped from 7/403 in 2017 to just 2. The party has just 1/80 Lok Sabha seats in UP.
