The Congress is considering advancing the Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite Indian March) on the ground that the communal temperature has risen sharply in the country while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refused to intervene despite appeals from politicians and civil society.

The Yatra is currently scheduled from October 2. But a meeting of the Yatra committee, headed by Digvijaya Singh, with the heads of the state units and frontal organisations felt it should start at the earliest given the communal polarisation, price rise and unemployment. The new date may be announced in a few days.

Digvijaya recently held the Prime Minister directly responsible for the situation, accusing him of weakening democratic institutions and the constitutional principles of equality and justice.

He has appealed to everyone, including NGOs, to join the Yatra if they are worried about the consequences of the RSS-BJP hate project and the deepening economic crisis.

Another party meeting — of the parliamentary strategy committee headed by Sonia Gandhi — has decided to give price rise and communal polarisation priority in the upcoming Parliament session. The other issues to be raised include the Agnipath scheme, unemployment, attack on the federal structure, dilution of the Forest Rights Act and misuse of central agencies.

A meeting of like-minded Opposition parties is to be held on Sunday to discuss the floor strategy.

At the party meeting, the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, and Lok Sabha leader Adhir Chowdhury highlighted hate speeches and attacks on Muslims.

“There is no dearth of disturbing issues under Narendra Modi. But we don’t know how many issues we would be allowed to discuss (in Parliament),” Chowdhury said.

“The economic crisis is grave, the price rise is troubling people, and we want the government to tell the country what it thinks about the communal polarisation.”

It was the Congress’s Chintan Shivir in Udaipur in May that had decided on organising the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Party communications chief Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday that although the Yatra was a response to the BJP’s “Bharat todo (break India) project”, issues such as price rise and unemployment would be included since they had made people’s lives miserable.

The Yatra, to be held strictly on foot, will pass through 12 states and two Union Territories, covering 3,500km over 150 days. States that don’t fall on the route are expected to send delegations to join the march for at least a few days.

‘Unparliamentary’ list

The Congress has decided to ignore the new list of unparliamentary expressions prepared by the Lok Sabha secretariat, arguing that describing the Modi government’s conduct would be impossible without using those words.

“We suffered such gag orders in Gujarat and the same is being repeated here,” Rajya Sabha member Shaktisinh Gohil said.

“Gujarat gave India its first Lok Sabha Speaker, G.V. Mavalankar. In Gujarat, we had the Mavalankar Bureau to train the state’s MLAs. Modi as chief minister scrapped the exercise. He didn’t want MLAs trained.”

Gohil said the BJP was itching to ban certain words to protect the Prime Minister’s image because those tags were sticking to him now.

“The Prime Minister called protesters ‘andolanjeevi’ (compulsive agitators). Home minister Amit Shah himself said the promise of Rs 15 lakh to everybody was a jumla (figure of speech). But we can’t call them ‘jumlebaz’, ‘jumla-jeevi’ (according to the new list),” he said.

“How can calling out corrupt practices be un-parliamentary? ‘You are lying’, ‘You are doing drama’ — why should these expressions be banned? What is un-parliamentary about this? The BJP used all these expressions for decades.

“When we pointed to corruption in the Vibrant Gujarat summit and alleged bhagidari (partnership) between the government and some corporate groups, the word ‘bhagidari’ was instantly declared un-parliamentary.”

Gohil added: “This period of Parliament will be seen as a black chapter because of the BJP’s attempts to control the free speech of MPs. We will request the Rajya Sabha Chairperson and the Lok Sabha Speaker to protect the members’ rights. It is their domain.

“This is plain gundagardi (hooliganism). This is an insult to democracy. How can this (new list of un-parliamentary words) be unilaterally decided? All parties should have been consulted.”