After the Bharatiya Janata Party’s decisive Assembly election victories in three Hindi-heartland states, the 2024 game is looking settled. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is more than confident about getting a third tenure and is already making promises about his next stint at the top post. The Congress has to swallow some bitter pills, as the defeat reduces their leverage amongst other parties of the INDIA alliance. In his last chance to revive the fortunes of the Congress party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is embarking on the second leg of his pan-India march, the ‘Bharat Nyay Yatra’.
The Bharat Nyay Yatra comes as Rahul Gandhi received tremendous support for its ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ which the Congress MP started in September 2022 from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. This time Rahul Gandhi will undertake a 150-day-long Bharat Nyay Yatra from Manipur in the northeast to Mumbai in western India.
“This Yatra will cover a distance of 6,200 km. It travels the states including Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, UP, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat and finally Maharashtra. The mode of yatra is through the bus,” Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal said while announcing the Bharat Nyay Yatra.
Bharat Nyay Yatra: The Lok Sabha calculus
Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Nyay Yatra, which will conclude just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, seems to be a well-thought-out plan. It remains to be seen if the impact of this Yatra will convert into numbers, but the route of the march covers most of the Lok Sabha seats of North India, especially where the Congress has shown a disastrous performance in the previous two Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress leader will cover 14 states during the Bharat Nyay Yatra and it includes crucial states like West Bengal (42 Lok Sabha seats), Bihar (40 seats), Uttar Pradesh (80 seats), Madhya Pradesh (29 seats), Rajasthan (25 seats), Gujarat (26 seats) and Maharashtra (48 seats). The march will also include Chhattisgarh (11 seats) which the Congress recently lost to the BJP.
Overall, the Bharat Nyay Yatra will cover 355 Lok Sabha seats which is 65% of the total parliamentary seats in the country. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 236 of the 355 seats while the Congress managed to win only 14.
Bharat Nyay Yatra: The alliance management
Apart from an attempt to regain its lost glory in the Hindi-heartland states, the Congress is also looking to send a message to the other parties of the INDIA alliance. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was successful in attracting a huge crowd and hence more cameras. So, when the former Congress president gets that sort of media attention in West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh, its alliance partner may get a signal from the Congress asserting its support base in these states.
In the recently concluded meeting of the INDIA alliance, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee proposed the name of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge as the prime minister candidate of the Opposition front. While some political pundits can’t stop themselves from calling it a move to sacrifice Mallikarjun Kharge in a no-brainer election, others still live in the La La Land of Congress making a comeback.
Published: 29 Dec 2023, 08:00 AM IST