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3000 participants, 1-hour duration: Rahul Gandhi to kick-start Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Manipur amid restrictions
Before starting the yatra, Rahul Gandhi will pay homage to martyrs at the Khongjom War Memorial in Thoubal.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will kick-start his second large-scale outreach programme, Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, from Thoubal district near Imphal on Sunday amid a few restrictions imposed by the Manipur government. The flagging-off ceremony should not exceed an hour and the number of participants be a maximum of 3000, according to the order issued by the office of Thoubal deputy commissioner.
The time limit on the event has been imposed given the venue being just beside and along the national highway and the traffic has to be diverted to alternate routes for that period, as per the order.
The Congress party had initially planned to commence the Yatra from Imphal Palace Ground but shifted to a private ground in Thoubal after the BJP-led N Biren Singh government restricted the number of participants to 1000.
The approval for the Yatra also includes conditions prohibiting anti-national or communal slogans during the rally. Organizers have been instructed to cooperate fully with state authorities, and the permission is contingent on maintaining peace, public order, and tranquillity in the area.
The order said, "There shall be no anti-national or communal or any adverse slogan during the rally and the Yatra" and the organisers should fully cooperate with the state authorities. The permission for the Yatra will stand cancelled if any situation arose "warranting such gathering to be disassembled in order to maintain peace, public order and tranquility in the area".
The Yatra is set to begin from a private ground in Khongjom area in Thoubal district, with Congresspresident Mallikarjun Kharge and other top leaders expected to participate in the outreach programme aiming to revive the party's electoral prospects following a poor showing in the last round of assembly elections.
Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra holds significance against the backdrop of ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur, which has claimed over 180 lives since May.
The Congress has said that it is taking out the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is not an electoral one but is being taken out as the government did not give it a chance to raise people's issues in Parliament and the initiative is aimed at re-establishing the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity enshrined in the Constitution.
The Yatra will travel through 100 Lok Sabha segments in 15 states before it culminates in Mumbai on March 20 or 21. Besides Manipur, the yatra will cover four northeastern states -- Nagaland (257 km in two days), Arunachal Pradesh (55 km in one day), Meghalaya (five km in one day) and Assam (833 km in eight days).
The yatra will then move on to West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
