Rahul's sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accompanied the Wayanad MP on the last day of the yatra.
The opposition INDIA bloc will hold a rally at Mumbai's iconic Shivaji Park on Sunday to kick off its campaign for the upcoming general elections. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav among others will participate in the event.
Two yatras
The East-West Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is the second iteration of Rahul Gandhi's march that started from Thoubal in Manipur on January 14 and covered 6,713 km across 15 states before culminating in Mumbai on Saturday – four days before its scheduled end date of March 20 .
The first version, called the Bharat Jodo Yatra, started from the south in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, on September 7, 2022, and ended in the north in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, after covering 4,080 km across 12 states.
The second march, mainly a bus yatra that accommodated daily marches, covered more distance in a shorter period than the first march, which was largely on foot. Yet it could not repeat the success of the first version, at least its optics. This is why:
Isolated by INDIA allies
The first march saw the participation of many celebrities and political leaders, who walked for a kilometer or two along with Rahul Gandhi.
Personalities like actors Kamal Haasan, Pooja Bhatt, Amol Palekar, former Army Chief General (Retd) Deepak Kapoor and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan participated in the yatra.
National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah, PDP's Mehbooba Mufti, Shiv Sena's Aaditya Thackeray, Priyanka Chaturvedi and Sanjay Raut and NCP's Supriya Sule, walked alongside Rahul in the first draft. Many analysts said that the first yatra helped Rahul Gandhi improve his personal brand.
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The second version, however, was a low-key affair. It saw a kind of isolated Rahul Gandhi, not only by celebrities but also by his allies in the opposition INDIA bloc.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar left the INDIA bloc and joined the National Democratic Alliance in January, just as Rahul Gandhi's yatra passed through his state of Bihar. According to party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Congress in Mamata Banerjee-ruled West Bengal faced problems in getting permission to organize public gatherings as part of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra the same month. Around the same time, the INDIA bloc lost another ally of UP, the RLD led by Jayant Choudhary.
“Think of the images and visuals of the first yatra. The grand affair as it ended while it was snowing in Srinagar. The optics and confidence were certainly high. In fact, I remember the yatra being seen as the opposition's movement to against the ruling BJP. Rahul Gandhi had more or less emerged as the leader who can unite other parties. But the second phase lacked the luster that the first had. It was poorly organised,” political analyst Rasheed Kidwai said. Living Coin.
Ram Mandir 'Pran Pratishstha'.
Rahul Gandhi did not pass through Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the two states that went to the polls during his yatra. However, Congress won Himachal Pradesh.
The Congress termed the first yatra as apolitical, but many leaders attributed it to the party's victory in the 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka, which were held about four months after the end of the first yatra.
But just before the second version of the march in January, the Congress party suffered abuse in three core Hindi states, losing the parliamentary elections to the BJP. However, the old party managed to wrest Telangana from K Chandrashekar Rao's Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
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Last month, Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said at a TV channel conclave that he, like many other leaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had wondered what Rahul Gandhi was trying to unite. “I'm not sure why he needs that jodo (unify) India, when we know that every part of India is firmly united,” Singh said.
Many in the Congress party even questioned the timing of the yatra, days before the Ram Mandir 'Pran Pratishtha'. Some of them felt that the Congress party should have accepted the invitation of Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Trust to attend the event on January 22.
“The Ram Mandir event took up all the media space. How could you expect any space for Rahul Gandhi's march, at least till the Ayodhya event,” said a Congress leader who did not wish to be named.
Controversies abound
In the second version of his march, Rahul Gandhi caused a lot of controversy. In February, while addressing a rally in Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi alleged that people running the country were kept away from the temple event, but Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan were present at the Ram Mandir event.
In Assam, the January yatra witnessed alleged clashes between police and Congress workers. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said an FIR has been registered against Rahul Gandhi and others for damaging public property during Nyay Yatra in the state capital Guwahati. The yatra took a five-day break from February 26 to March 1 as the Congress leader left for Britain to deliver lectures at Cambridge University
Not that the first version of the yatra was without controversies. In its early days in Tamil Nadu, the BJP attacked Rahul Gandhi for wearing a Burberry T-shirt it said was worth it. ₹ 41,000 during the yatra. Congress hit back with a “ ₹10 lakh suit” barb aimed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In Kerala, a photo of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar appeared on a yatra campaign poster near Kochi.
Mystifying timing
Author and political analyst Neerja Chowdhury believes that Rahul Gandhi has gained a national profile thanks to the two Yatras, yet she calls the second version, especially its timing, puzzling in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Many feel that Rahul's Yatra-2 could have been more about the INDIA alliance and less about himself, thereby, like nothing else, he could have sent a signal to the coalition gearing up for the 2024 elections and moves incrementally from state to state. the Allies were not consulted and they were only made part of the journey at the last minute, as in UP and later in Maharashtra. It was a missed opportunity,” she wrote in the Indian Express.
Comparisons aside, the real impact of both Rahul Gandhi's yatras in the last two years can be judged by the election results in the Lok Sabha polls starting on April 19.
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Published: Mar 17, 2024 1:31 PM IST