BHOPAL: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will join Rahul Gandhi when his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ enters Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra on Wednesday. This would be the first time that Priyanka, the Congress national general secretary and party’s face in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, will join her brother in the yatra, which started on September 7.
Party general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh tweeted that Priyanka would join the yatra for four days. This would be perhaps the first time since May 2019 that she will be touring the Malwa-Nimar region of the central Indian state. Earlier, in May 2019, she had toured the western MP region for the Lok Sabha polls, when MP was ruled by the Kamal Nath-led Congress government. The party, however, had badly lost all the eight seats of the region, including Ratlam and Indore, where she had addressed rallies and held a road show, besides Ujjain.
The yatra is scheduled to enter the Hindi heartland on Wednesday morning through Bodarli village in Burhanpur district. Burhanpur district party sources said the Bodarli village has a historic link with the Nehru-Gandhi family, as Indira Gandhi had addressed a torchlight rally in the same village 42 years back, in support of party candidate Shiv Kumar Singh during the 1980 Lok Sabha polls.
Indira Gandhi had also toured the tribal-dominated Burhanpur and Khandwa districts for three days, mostly in an open jeep, powering the party candidate to victory over BJP stalwart Kushabhau Thakre.
In MP, the yatra will travel around 399 km, through 25-30 assembly segments of six districts, including Burhanpur, Khandwa, Khargone, Indore, Ujjain, and Agar-Malwa, before entering Rajasthan on December 5.