Amidst the setback to the Congress in many states including Maharashtra and now Goa, the party has called a meeting of State Congress Committee (PCC) presidents, frontal organization heads along with all the general secretaries in-charge and state in-charges on July. 14.
According to party sources, the meeting will be held at the AICC headquarters in Delhi where issues including ‘Bharat Jodi Yatra’ and upcoming organizational programs will be discussed.
Congress party’s ambitious Bharat Jodi Yatra will be led by former party chief Rahul Gandhi, which will cover at least 16 states and have enough space to accommodate other like-minded opposition parties.
This march, which will start from October 2, will end in Kashmir by flagging off from Kanyakumari. Its preparations have started. A committee, led by former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, was formed to plan the ambitious yatra, which aims to spread the message of unity across India and mark the Congress party’s first all-India march to independent India.
Digvijay Singh, Sachin Pilot, Shashi Tharoor, Ravneet Singh Bittu, KJ George, Jothi Mani, Pradyut Bordoloi, Jitu Patwari, and Salim Ahmed are members of the Central Planning Group to coordinate the Congress Party’s largest non-election campaign Bharat Jodi Yatra. Huh.
According to the two leaders involved in the plan, states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab are likely to join the march. The party plans to complete the 3,500 km long journey in five to six months and the entire route will be covered on foot.
Planning for the yatra began during the Udaipur Chintan Shivir (brainstorming workshop) and many Congress leaders were keen that the party announced that the yatra would be led by Gandhi in the Udaipur Sankalp.
Meanwhile, with the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, the Congress significantly reduced its political footprint.
In a setback to the party in Goa, Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary CT Ravi, who is also the party’s Goa in-charge, on Monday claimed that 12 Goa Congress MLAs are ready to quit the party and join the BJP.
Goa Congress on Monday said it is demanding the disqualification of two of its leaders Michael Lobo and Digambar Kamat from the assembly.
This comes as five Goa Congress MLAs, who had gone incommunicado a day earlier, attended the proceedings of the state assembly on the first day of the monsoon session on Monday, claiming that there was “nothing wrong” in the opposition party.
Hours after the Goa Congress unit filed a disqualification petition against party leader Lobo and former Chief Minister Kamat for “anti-party activities”, the former denied any “compelling” with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The old party filed a petition against Lobo and Kamat before the Speaker of the Assembly, Ramesh Tavdkar.
The party also has cause for concern in Jharkhand, where a rift is developing between the Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), a key partner in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the eastern state, over a range of issues.
In another major setback to India’s ‘oldest party’, two senior Congress leaders from Uttarakhand – spokesperson Rajendra Prasad Raturi and state Mahila Congress vice-president Kamlesh Raman – joined the Aam Aadmi Party on Monday. While Raturi said that he spent 45 years in the Congress, Raman claimed that he gave 28 years to the party.