Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is leading the party's Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir foot march, has caught wide attention for wearing t-shirts despite the winter chill in north India. On Monday, he shared an account as he continues to face barrage of questions about his clothes more than politics. "One day three poor children in torn clothes came to me...When I held them, they were shivering as they were not wearing proper clothes. On that day, I took a decision that till the time I do not shiver, I will only wear a T-shirt,"the Wayanad MP said at a briefing.
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Since the yatra arrived in northern India (after starting from Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari in September), Gandhi has been questioned multiple times for wearing t-shirts while people brave winter chills. At a presser in Delhi, Gandhi asked, "Why is there so much hullabaloo over a T-shirt? I do not wear a sweater because I am not scared of winter. I am thinking of wearing a sweater once I start feeling cold."
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{{/usCountry}}Last week, the Congress MP also pointed out that poor people who walked alongside him also did not wear warm clothes, but the media chose to only make his choice of clothing an issue. "Questions (about) my t-shirt (are) not the real issue... the children, farmers and labourers of India... walking around without warm clothes during winter is the real issue," Gandhi said at a rally in Baraut in Uttar Pradesh.
The mass contact campaign, Bharat Jodo Yatra, resumed from Khanpur Kolian on Monday morning as part of its Haryana leg, and witnessed an all-women march.
So far, the Yatra, which started from Kanyakumari on September 7, has covered parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Haryana.