Rahul Gandhi's yatra will cross 12 states and two Union Territories.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will begin his 3,570-km Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumar on Wednesday. He paid homage to his late father, Rajiv Gandhi, in Sriperumbudur. The campaign will be completed in 150 days where Gandhi will transverse the entire length of the country -- from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The Congress contingent will move 25 kilometers every day with the message of peace and communal harmony. Political experts believe the campaign is being launched to reinvigorate the party ahead of the 2024 general elections.
The Congress contingent will comprise three kinds of workers -- 100 people who would accompany Gandhi from the start of the yatra to its conclusion, those who would join in states the procession is crossing from, and those from outside of those states.
Gandhi's yatra will cross 12 states and two Union Territories. 30 percent of Rahul Gandhi's fellow travelers will be women. It will cross cities like Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Nilambur, Mysuru, Bellary, Raichur, Vikarabad, Nanded, Jalgaon, Indore, Kota, Dausa, Alwar, Bulandshahr, Delhi, Ambala, Pathankot, Jammu and Srinagar.
Rahul Gandhi's schedule
Rahul Gandhi will attend an event at 4:30 PM in Kanyakumari where Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, Rajasthan's Ashok Gehlot and Chhattisgarh's Bhupesh Baghel will be present.
After the event at the Mahatma Gandhi Mandapam where Stalin will be present, Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders will walk to the seaside venue of the rally where the yatra will be formally launched.
Significance of Sriperumbudur?
Rahul Gandhi's father, late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated on May 21, 1991, when he campaigned for the general elections in Tamil Nadu. 14 people around the charismatic leader also perished in the suicide attack carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operative.
The incident took place when Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning along with GK Moopanar. He had campaigned in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam and reached Tamil Nadu's Sriperumbudur. The convoy of white ambassador cars stopped at several places for him to interact with the electorate. He reached the rally venue and began walking toward the stage from where he was to deliver a speech. The assassin Rajaratnam bowed down to touch his feet and then detonated the RDX belt. Gandhi died on the spot. 43 people suffered serious injuries. A local cameraperson perished in the suicide attack but his camera caught the assassination.
The Rajiv Gandhi Memorial was built on the site of the assassination in Sriperumbudur where the junior Gandhi visited this morning.
It is for this reason Gandhi started his yatra from the city.
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 "Rahul Gandhi (File)")
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