Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai sought to downplay the participation of Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi in the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra, saying "she has walked for half-a-km and gone." He also asserted that Congress's mass outreach programme, which is currently underway in poll-bound Karnataka, will have no impact in the state.
"Naturally all party leaders will work for their own party, she (Sonia Gandhi) has walked for half-a-kilometre and gone, it's okay", Bommai told reporters.
"As far as we are concerned, we have nothing to do with it and it doesn't make any impact," he said.
The Karnataka chief minister also dismissed reports that claimed the BJP was planning rallies to counter the Congress's yatra ahead of the Assembly elections, saying the rallies were planned much earlier.
"As I had said earlier there will be six rallies, this will be part of that...we had planned it earlier, but as there was Assembly session, we had decided to do it after Dasara," he added.
Sonia Gandhi today joined the yatra in Pandavapura in Mandya district and walked beside her son Rahul Gandhi and other leaders amid cheers and slogan-shouting by party workers.
“We have weathered many a storm and will overcome all challenges. Together we will unite India,” Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi as he posted a photograph of him walking with his mother, with his arm around her. Another picture of the mother-son duo widely shared on social media by Congress leaders was of Rahul Gandhi bending to tie his mother’s shoelaces.
{{/usCountry}}“We have weathered many a storm and will overcome all challenges. Together we will unite India,” Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi as he posted a photograph of him walking with his mother, with his arm around her. Another picture of the mother-son duo widely shared on social media by Congress leaders was of Rahul Gandhi bending to tie his mother’s shoelaces.
{{/usCountry}}The picture prompted Congress leader Shashi Tharoor to put out a post in Hindi, which said, "There are blessings even when she breathes, no one can replace a mother as mothers are mothers."
(With PTI inputs)