Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is likely to spend four days in Odisha during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra next month, a Congress leader said on Thursday.

The yatra, which is scheduled to start on January 14 from Manipur, will enter Odisha from Jharkhand and cover the districts of Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Sundergarh and Jharsuguda, said senior Odisha Congress leader Sarat Rout.

Addressing a press conference, Rout said, "We are expecting that the yatra will be held in Odisha during the second and third week of February before its enters neighbouring Chhattisgarh." Though the programme is scheduled to cover 341km in four districts, the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) has requested the central leadership to include few more districts within the state, he said.

Asked whether the yatra would cover coastal and southern regions of the state, Rout said the senior Congress leader will certainly visit those parts of the state later through other programmes.

"The party plans to organise a major rally in Bhubaneswar, likely to be addressed by Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge," he informed.

Interestingly, the yatra route covers the western region of the state, which is popularly known as the saffron belt of Odisha.

Congress is, however, comparatively in a better position in the southern parts of the state covering Koraput, Nabarangpur, Malkangiri and Rayagada districts.

The yatra will culminate in Mumbai after covering a distance of over 6,700km, passing through 110 districts of 15 states including Odisha in 66 days, Rout said.

The party is optimistic that the yatra will boost the morale of Congress leaders and workers ahead of the Lok Sabha and assembly polls in Odisha since the had party slipped to the third position from second in the last assembly polls in 2019.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha and assembly polls, the Congress had won nine of the 147 MLA seats and only one MP seat in Odisha. This year, the party has set a target of winning at least 90 MLA seats and a good number of LS seats in the polls.

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