Rahul Gandhi who is leading the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the 3500-km-long walkathon across the nation from Kanyakumari to Kashmir on Tuesday expressed his strong reservations over the controversial Kasaragod-Thiruvananthapuram High Speed Rail Track and asked the Congress leadership in Kerala to agitate against the project.
The former president of the Congress met persons who stand to lose their . households and farmlands to the project and assured them of all help. Congress leaders in Kerala are on a path of agitation against the 530 km project which is enmeshed in controversies.
Meanwhile Congressmen across Tamil Nadu and Kerala are unanimous in their stance that Rahul Gandhi should take control of the party at this critical juncture. The demand for Rahul’s ascension to the post of AICC president is growing by the hour as the Bharat Jodo Yatra is drawing wide attention in the State.
On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi completed the walkathon through the district of Thiruvananthapuram unperturbed by rainfalls.
In an interesting development, all debates on the next president of the party has subsided as leaders of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee are fully focused on making the Yatra a huge success.
“If the public participation which we are experiencing is any indication, the Yatra has already become a success,” said Ramesh Chennithala, former minister and senior leader. Mohammed Shiyaz, president, Ernakulam district Congress Committee who is in charge of the Yatra for the next three days said that there was a unanimity among partymen that Rahul should take over the presidentship of the party. Though there was an attempt by a section of the CPI(M) to ‘ridicule’ the Bharat Jodo Yatra in social media for excluding crucial States like Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and a major portion of Uttar Pradesh from the itinerary, party’s Kerala secretary M V Govindan said on Tuesday that his party would not question the sincerity behind the mission.
Rahul Gandhi who has been expressing his concern over the sharp cut made by the Centre in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Programme over the last five years met those who lost their income because of the Government move and expressed his anguish over it. “Rahul Gandhi has assured us that he would continue his fight to restore the programme to its original original form,” said one of the former beneficiaries.