New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi is set to start his Gujarat tour from the second week of June and will address rallies in all the four zones of the poll-bound state. Assembly elections in Gujarat are scheduled to be held later this year. “The tour is being planned from the second week of June,” former Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chavda told ETV Bharat.
The tour will start from south Gujarat and over the coming weeks will cover all the four zones in the western state where senior AICC and state leaders have conducted preparatory sessions over the past weeks. The four districts in the various zones where AICC in-charge of Gujarat Raghu Sharma held conclaves with state leaders and MLAs over the past weeks are Navsari, Mehsana, Bardoli and Vadodra.
State unit chief Jagdish Thakor on Monday inspected the rally site in Navsari district along with senior leaders and later held a meeting with party leaders in Chikhli to prepare for Rahul’s event. Congress insiders said during Rahul’s visit two rallies, one in a rural area and the other in an urban settlement, will be organised to reach out to voters in both the areas.
They further said that while the lack of development has provided the opposition party with fertile ground in the rural areas, boosting the party’s performance in the urban areas is the main challenge before Congress. “The lack of development in the villages has created a situation similar to that in 2017. But we need to plan better for the cities,” said a senior AICC functionary.
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The focus of Rahul’s rally in south Gujarat will be on the plight of the Tribals, who are spread out across 40 Assembly seats. Recently, Rahul had claimed that the state government had canceled the controversial Par-Tapi-Narmada river-linking project, which would have displaced around 50,000 Tribals, under pressure from the forest dwellers as well as the Congress, which had supported the adivasis.
Rahul on May 10 addressed a rally in Dahod where he had assured the locals to cancel the controversial river-linking project if Congress was voted to power. Ahead of Rahul’s visit, Vansada MLA Anant Patel, who has been spearheading an 'Adivasi Satyagraha' for months, organised a huge rally to express solidarity with the tribals.
Patel and CLP leader Sukhram Jathava have been demanding a white paper on the condition of Tribals in the western state saying that the forest dwellers have been at the receiving end of the allegedly “lop-sided” development in the state.
“Much of Rahul’s theme would be centered around the plight of the hapless Adivasis. Earlier, he had assured the community to fight for their cause. Besides, he will also flag the local issues zone-wise,” said the AICC functionary.
