Bharat Jodo Yatra to resume on Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi to hoist tricolour in Srinagar on January 30

New Delhi, January 2, 2023

The Congress party's Bharat Jodo Yatra, with Rahul Gandhi at the helm, will begin its second leg from Delhi tomorrow after a nine-day break.

The 150-day, 3,570 km Kanyakumari-Kashmir march on foot is scheduled to end on January 30 with Gandhi hoisting the flag in Srinagar.

The yatra, which began from the Gandhi Mandapam at Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 7, has covered 3,122 km so far. Over 108 days in the first leg, Gandhi and the other yatris have walked through 49 districts in nine States and one Union Territory -- Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi.

The yatris reached the Red Fort in Delhi on December 24, after which they took a nine-day break during which many of them went back to be with their families for a few days. The time was utilised by the organisers to modify the containers, in which the yatris spend the nights, to make them suitable for the extremely harsh winter in north India.

Tomorrow, the yatra will resume from Delhi and will pass through Uttar Pradesh for three days before re-entering Haryana on January 6. It will cover Punjab from January 11-20, entering Himachal Pradesh for one day on January 19 and finally enter Jammu and Kashmir on January 20 and end in Srinagar on January 30.

During the yatra, which covers a distance of around 25 km in a day, Gandhi and the other yatris and Congress leaders have been meeting and interacting with hundreds of people.

Gandhi has held 87 sitting interactions of 30-40 minutes with various groups of between 20 and 30 people on a variety of issues, many of them dealing with issues of the states they are passing through. There have been more than planned walks with smaller groups of 4-5 people, from celebrities to intellectuals to ex-servicemen to local children.

Over and above that, Gandhi has been talking to countless people who have come up to him during the yatra.

The former Congress President has held 95 corner meetings during the Yatra, which he uses to address various issues and talk about the main theme of the exercise. In addition, he has addressed 10 large public meetings and also addresed nine press conferences.

In between, Gandhi and the yatris have visited various religious and spiritual centres and attended performances by many artistes, including two Bharat Jodo concerts.

"Through this Yatra, a significant milestone has been created by the Congress Party, with a tradition of representing the voice of all Indians," Congress general secretary K C Venugopal told media persons in Delhi today.

He said 70 per cent of the people who have participated in the yatra so far are below 35 years of age. Women, farmers, small and medium businesspersons, all sections of people have participated in the yatra, he added.

NNN