Bhubaneswar: Ahead of 2024 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to spend four days in Odisha as part of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra next month, Congress leader Sarat Rout said today.
The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) today released the party’s Logo set for the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra and informed about the visit of Gandhi.
Congress leaders appealed to the people to join the party on a large scale and make Rahul Gandhi’s yatra a success. A phone number was also released by the party today, which can be dialed by people interested to take part in the yatra.
Addressing a press conference, Shri 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.”
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 Rout.
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 INC 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, Shri 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 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.
