New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Saturday said ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ was not an initiative to project Rahul Gandhi as a prime ministerial candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, news agency PTI reported.
“This Bharat Jodo Yatra is not to project Rahul Gandhi as a prime ministerial candidate. It is an ideological yatra of which the main face is Rahul Gandhi. It is not one individual’s yatra,” PTI quoted Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in-charge communications, as saying in response to a question, in a camp near Madhuban where Rahul Gandhi stopped for rest on Saturday.
The party leader further asserted that the ‘Kanyakumari to Kashmir’ foot march, which is currently passing through Karnal in Haryana, is not an election yatra.
Jairam Ramesh further added that Rahul Gandhi has raised three big issues in the Bharat Jodo Yatra, namely economic inequality, social polarisation and political authoritarianism.
Slamming the government, Ramesh accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of playing divisive politics and said that they had promised maximum governance and minimum government. However, instead of it, maximum polarisation and hate, minimum governance was being given to the people.
“The BJP is promoting politics of hate, fear and vengeance. This ‘nafrat chodo, bharat jodo’ initiative is the best answer to it. During the elections, the Prime Minister had raised the slogan of maximum governance and minimum government, but over the last eight years they have spread maximum hate and minimum governance as people are being divided on the basis of religion,” he said, adding that the politics of hate has also affected the economy of the country.
Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “The foot march and rally are not for getting votes but to raise issues.”