Kollam (Kerala): Congress MP Rahul Gandhi along with party leaders and workers resumed the 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' on its eighth day in Kollam on Friday, after a one-day break on September 15.
Meanwhile, Congress leader and AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that if the Bharat Jodo yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir turns out to be successful, the party will go ahead with another yatra from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh. Ramesh also indicated that the Bharat Jodo Yatra is not linked to the election campaigns in Gujarat and Himachal.
"We'll cover nearly 3,100km in 150 days in the second phase. This is the longest march undertaken by any political party in the world. Earlier it was the one undertaken by Chinese leader Mao Zedong. If the yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir turns successful, we'll go ahead with the one from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh," Jairam Ramesh said in Kollam.
CPM's Pinarayi Vijayan, on the other hand, criticized the initiative and raised questions about the intentions behind it. "Bharat Jodo or Seat Jodo? 18 days in Kerala, 2 days in UP. Strange way to fight BJP-RSS," said a tweet by Vijayan, who heads Kerala's Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. Kerala is the only state where the Left has a government. The CPM was the Congress's election partner in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election, but the grand old party is the Left outfit's principal opposition in the southern state.
Jairam Ramesh, reacting to Vijayan's tweet, said in a tweet, "Do your homework better on how and why yatra was planned the way it is. And silly criticism from a party that is the A team of BJP in the land of MunduModi."
The Yatra completed its seventh day on Wednesday which was started from Navayikkulam in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram. On the seventh day, Rahul Gandhi interacted with students at Chathannur in the Kollam district.
"As we conclude the first week of Bharat Jodo Yatra today, with the distance covered and souls we connected with, our commitment grew stronger, our goal became clearer, and our family grew larger. This is the power of truth; the power of oneness," the Congress said.
