Bharat Jodo Yatra-2 Rahul plans Oct 2 launch from Mahatma’s birthplace
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi has decided to launch the second leg of his hugely successful Bharat Jodo Yatra. Sources said it will begin from Porbandar, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, this October 2. The Yatra will start from Gujarat and pass through at least four poll-bound states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram -- before concluding at the holy Parshuram Kund in the Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh. So far, it is unclear if the Yatra will also touch Telangana, also scheduled for elections this December.
A team of top Congress leaders, including K C Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh, is finalising the route in consultation with Rahul Gandhi and leaders of the states the Yatra will pass through. Initially, the Yatra was to culminate at the Kamakhya Devi Temple at Guwahati. But since the Manipur turmoil has hit the entire northeast, the Yatra was extended to the region’s other states to express solidarity with the people. The Bharat Jodo Yatra has been one of the most successful mass contact programmes the Congress party has undertaken in decades.
A part of the credit for the party’s success in the Karnataka assembly election has been given to the Yatra, which went through the southern state for twenty-one days, touching scores of villages, towns and cities. On the lines of the first leg of the Yatra that went on for five months, the Bharat Jodo-2 is likely to go on for four months and end with the Parshuram Kund Mela, known as the Kumbh of the Northeast, attended by thousands from across the country on Makar Sankranti in January.
CWC reconstitution Congress finds Udaipur Declaration tough to implement
The Congress party’s Nav Sankalp (new resolve) declaration adopted at the Chintan Shivir in Udaipur on May 15, 2022, has become the biggest impediment to reconstituting the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body. The party said in its Udaipur Declaration, “It is in the organisation’s interest to limit the term of a position to five years so that new people get an opportunity. Not only this, taking into consideration the demographics of India, it is important to ensure that 50% of the office bearers in Congress Working Committee, Pradesh Congress Committees, District Congress Committees, Block Congress Committees and Mandal Congress Committees are below the age of 50.
Each of these units must also reflect social reality. Just and fair representation of Dalits, adivasis, backward classes, minorities and women should be ensured. The principle of one-person-one-post should be followed.” According to sources, the party is finding it difficult to get suitable candidates under fifty for the CWC. Top party leaders have had many rounds of meetings on this subject, but the constitution of the CWC has been inordinately delayed.
The Udaipur Declaration had mandated that “all the vacant positions at the Block, District, State and National level will be filled in the next 90 to 180 days…” It has been over eight months since Mallikarjun Kharge was elected as Congress president in October 2022 and five months since the AICC plenary at Raipur ratified his election and authorised him to nominate the CWC, but a decision is yet to be taken on the issue.
