Rahul Gandhi in white shirt
By G Krishna Mohan Rao*
After a break, Rahul Gandhi began the second leg of his scheduled 3570 KM long Bharat Jodo Yatra from Delhi on January 3, 2023, with high hopes and desperation for the revival of the Congress Party at the national level. Rahul’s gigantic mass contact programme, which started from Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari on September 7, 2022, will face critical electoral tests in nine states in 2023 which will set the stage for the final battle of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. While the Congress Party is making an out effort for its revival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seemingly in high spirits as it considers that the Congress is no longer a real challenge to it in the run-up to the general elections.
In real terms, however, political pundits say that Congress is the only party which can stop the momentum of the BJP since it still maintains more than 20 per cent of the vote share in the country. Soon after the Bharat Jodo Yatra ends in the last week of January 2023, the Congress will get an opportunity to make a realistic assessment of the ground situation and get ready for the assembly elections coming up in North East —Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland. Two months later, in May, elections are to be held in Karnataka, a state where the Congress entertains high hopes. A victory in Karnataka would certainly inject new life into the demoralised organisation.
At this stage, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) strongly feels that the Bharat Jodo Yatra indeed reinvented the Congress. However, it says that a lot of work needs to be done at the organisational level to translate goodwill into votes. The mega show of the AICC Plenary session is scheduled for February (24 to 26) and is keenly awaited. The plenary session at Raipur is going to focus on 6 major subjects to be debated— political, economic, international affairs, farmers and agriculture, social justice and empowerment, youth education and employment.
The new Congress Working Committee (CWC) will also be in place after the plenary and the new party chief Mallikarjun Kharge has repeatedly said that the implementation of the Udaipur vision will be his priority. The Congress had promised critical changes in the organisational structure, including setting up a public insight department for continuous feedback from the ground, a performance assessment wing for office-bearers and 50 per cent reservation for the youth at all levels in the party. The party used to hire professional agencies during elections to get feedback from the ground and the public insight department has been planning to keep its fingers on the pulse of people across the nation.
The Congress Party also talked about the one-man-one-post principle and violated it by retaining Mallikarjun Kharge as the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. The plan to expand the organisation by constituting Mandal Committees between booth and block committees also lies in cold storage. Observers feel that with its struggle for revival through the most gruelling and gigantic mass contact programme of Bharat Jodo, the Congress leadership needs a lot of introspection to make the party ready to face assembly polls in nine states in 2023 followed by the General Election in 2024.
Presently, the Bharat Jodo Yatra, passing through Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, would enter Punjab next week, and in between a day in Himachal Pradesh, would culminate in Jammu and Kashmir on January 30, with flag hoisting in Srinagar. During the first phase, the Yatra covered 49 districts, one union territory and 9 States including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, over a period of 108 days.
The Congress claims that the Bharat Jodo Yatra is truly a ‘listening exercise’ for the party. The Yatra offered an opportunity for the party to listen to the people in large numbers.
So far, there have been 87 meetings, sitting interactions for 30- 40 minutes with various groups including youth, farmers, ex-servicemen and physically challenged. Further, Rahul Gandhi also held about 200 planned walks with smaller groups of 4-5 people from celebrities to intellectuals to activists to ex-servicemen and to small kids even.
In addition, there have been uncounted people from different walks whom Rahul has greeted and walked during this Yatra. The spirit of the Bharat Jodo Yatra has been celebrated with visits to several important religious places and spiritual centres, interaction and performances by numerous artists and two major Bharat Jodo concerts. So far, Rahul held 9 press conferences, one in each state, where the media especially local media freely asked questions.
The party exudes confidence that through this Yatra, a significant milestone has been created by the Congress Party, with a tradition of representing the voice of all Indians.
*Senior journalist
