Shaking off the despair caused by the unexpected setbacks in the Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland, the Congress Working Committee on Thursday asked Rahul Gandhi to lead another yatra that could become the pivot on which a powerful campaign is built for the 2024 battle.
The meeting was primarily aimed at clearing the mist generated by the BJP’s hype after its victories in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The CWC sent out a message to party workers and voters that the 2024 election was not a done deal and the Opposition combine INDIA was well on track to oust the “unpopular” Narendra Modi government.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said in his opening remarks at the CWC meeting that he had received passionate pleas from party workers for a yatra from east to west, after the Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.
Almost all the members endorsed the idea, pleading with Rahul to embark on yet another arduous journey. Party general secretary K.C. Venugopal said that details of the yatra would be worked out soon.
As the campaign for the parliamentary elections will require the party’s unifocal dedication, the plan is to wrap the yatra up before electioneering starts. Because of paucity of time, this initiative may be different from the Bharat Jodo Yatra in content and form, with vehicles being used to cover long distances instead of walking without a break.
The yatra could start from Arunachal Pradesh and enter Bengal through Assam, before moving into Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The intention is to start in January and complete the exercise in Gujarat by March.
Although no formal announcement was made on Thursday, Venugopal indicated that the idea had received the seal of approval at the CWC meeting and the scheduling would be done soon.
The yatra is expected to push the party into election mode. The CWC has decided to get cracking without delay, and the screening committees for candidate selection and the manifesto will be formed over the next few days. The December 28 rally in Nagpur will sound the battle cry.
Sewing up two major elements — the attack on democracy and the economic distress — the CWC tried to puncture the impression Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so assiduously created about his invincibility.
“We have identified the causes of our defeat and corrective measures have been taken. Our vote share is intact in these three states and we are going to do well,” Venugopal said, announcing that the preparations would start right away.
Addressing the CWC meeting, Kharge said India’s status as a great democracy was in crisis because of the way the Modi government was conducting Parliament. He said the BJP had hatched a conspiracy to transform Parliament into a ruling party platform. But he insisted that the life of a politics based on “arrogance, sins and lies” is short and can be demolished by fair means.
Referring to Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar’s conduct, Kharge said: “The greatest challenge is that the people occupying constitutional offices, who are supposed to give protection to Opposition members, themselves become part of the partisan politics using symbols like caste, region and profession. They have completely failed to discharge constitutional responsibilities. The whole country is watching this.”
On the surprise defeats in the recent Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland, Kharge said: “We have learnt valuable lessons from the mistakes we have made and are committed to avoiding a recurrence of them. Despite the results, there are some positive indicators, such as the vote share in these states, that give us a definite hope that given due attention, we can certainly turn things around.”
Preparations for the Lok Sabha elections have been reviewed for 24 states, and coordinators for the constituencies will be appointed soon.
A resolution adopted at the meeting condemned the suspension of 143 INDIA MPs from Parliament.
“These MPs were simply demanding that the home minister make a statement on the extraordinary events of December 13th 2023 in the Lok Sabha and on the role of the BJP MP from Mysore in facilitating the entry of the two intruders who caused the serious security breach. The suspension was done also to ensure that the Opposition was not present to challenge the Modi government as it bulldozed three draconian criminal justice laws through,” it said.
The resolution also said: “Economic inequalities are widening while prices of essential commodities continue to rise and a growing jobs famine haunts the youth. There is a vast gap between what the Prime Minister claims and what the ground realities are. Social polarisation is deepening and is being encouraged deliberately in a provocative manner for electoral gains. Democracy itself is under assault and all freedoms that our citizens are guaranteed under the Constitution are under attack. These are the issues at stake now.”
