Following the hectic days in the run-up to the Congress presidential election, senior leader Manish Tewari finally gets time to join the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, led by former president Rahul Gandhi.
A former Union minister, Tewari the Yatra, in Telangana, along with several leaders from Punjab, including state unit chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and Harish Chaudhary.
In August, after the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision-making body, announced internal polls for the party’s top post, Tewari, who was also a part of the much-hyped G-23 leaders, questioned “how can there be a free and fair election without a publicly available electoral roll”.
He was also among the 23 leaders of the party who demanded organisational elections in Congress in August 2020 after writing a letter to the then-party chief Sonia Gandhi.
However, in a turn of events, he signed the nomination paper of Kharge as a proposer, after the latter announced his candidature on the last day of nomination.
It was only after this that speculations were rife that the displeasure of the alleged G-23 of the Congress had gone away as soon as the grand old party found a new president in the form of octogenarian Kharge.
Meanwhile, the Yatra resumed from Yeligandla in the Narayanpet district of Telangana on Friday, Day 51. According to party leaders, the pad yatra will halt at Mahbubnagar on Friday night. This is the third day of the yatra in Telangana, which began on October 23.
The yatra was halted from October 24 to 26, in view of Diwali celebrations and the charge-taking ceremony of Kharge at party headquarters in New Delhi.
The Yatra will enter Maharashtra on November 7 after completing a distance of over 375 km in Telangana, where it passed through nine districts and 19 assembly seats.
The Yatra will be welcomed in Maharashtra’s Wardha by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena leader and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Meanwhile, addressing the public on Thursday evening, Rahul Gandhi slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ruling in the state.
Speaking on the MLA poaching controversy, Rahul Gandhi, who is a Lok Sabha MP from Kerala’s Wayanad, said that both parties (BJP and TRS) are two sides of the same coin. He opined that they are against democratic values and indulge in money politics.
The Congress leader accused both the TRS and the BJP of horse-trading and toppling governments.
“For us, BJP and TRS are two sides of the same coin. They both work together. They help each other. TRS helps BJP in Delhi and BJP helps TRS in Telangana,” said the Gandhi scion.
“Both parties are against democracy and indulge in the politics of money. They do money politics by buying MLAs and both parties work to topple the government,” he said in Narayanpet.