Bharat Jodo Yatra: Jairam Ramesh explains Rahul Gandhi’s 18 days in Kerala, skipping poll-bound Gujarat, Himachal

Jairam Ramesh explained Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra’s 18 days in Kerala and skipping poll-bound Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. He added the yatra would also spend five days in UP.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has defended party’s premier leader Rahul Gandhi’s move to bypass both poll-bound states, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, as part of his ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra. Jairam Ramesh indicated that the Bharat Jodo Yatra is not linked to the election campaigns in Gujarat and Himachal.

The 3,500-km Yatra has been criticised by some, including the CPM, for spending “18 days in Kerala and only two in Uttar Pradesh" while skipping Gujarat and Himachal altogether.

According to the Congress, the broad idea behind this five-month-long mass-contact walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir is to unite India, which the party feels is suffering from religious polarisation, among other issues like inflation and a jobs crisis.

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“Bharat Jodo or Seat Jodo? 18 days in Kerala, 2 days in UP. Strange way to fight BJP-RSS,” said a tweet by the CPM whose Pinarayi Vijayan 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.

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Congress MP and General Secretary in-charge, Communications, of the party, Jairam Ramesh, responded to the CPM with 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”.