NEW DELHI: Bihar’s ruling Janata Dal (United) which parted its way with the BJP months ago to form the RJD government in the state, has expressed its inability to attend the concluding function of Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra in Srinagar on January 30.
While thanking Rahul for the invitation, Janata Dal (United) president Lalan Singh on Thursday expressed his party’s inability to attend the closing event but asked Congress to take appropriate steps to unite the opposition ahead of the 2024 LSD polls.
In a letter written to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday said that the JDU national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh cited his scheduled engagement for a political programme in poll-bound Nagaland as a reason for not being able to attend the closing event of Bharat Jodo Yatra.
“There are no two opinions that there is a decline in democratic values in the country and that the ‘Constitutional institutions’ that are supposed to ensure checks and balance on unrestrained executive power are being systematically destroyed,” Singh has stated in his letter to the Congress President.
He further in the letter admitted that the Bharat Jodo Yatra has also given him an opportunity to study, experience and sense the mood and anxieties of the people first-hand.
“I am sure that will go a long way in helping us formulate joint strategies in the run-up to the 2024 LS elections,” Singh said.
Wishing the concluding event of the Bharat Jodo Yatra a grand success, Singh further said, "My party sincerely feels that the need of the hour is a unified opposition and expects that the Indian National Congress takes appropriate steps in this direction."
Taking a swipe at the Modi-led central government, the JDU national president further said: “The pace at which the country is fast transforming itself from an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy, to say the least, is -frightening.”
He said that his presence at the launching of the JDU electoral campaign at Wokha in poll-bound Nagaland the same day was unavoidable.
Recently, the Congress Party as part of its electoral strategy being ramped up ahead of the next LS election against the ruling BJP has sent invitations to almost all parties in Opposition to attend the concluding event in Srinagar on January 30.
As some political analysts said, the JDU also nurtures an ambition to project its leader and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar as prime ministerial candidature. “In such a situation, the JDU seems to have made an intelligent excuse to skip the event without losing the chance of a political alliance with the Congress Party in future against the BJP,” remarked a Patna-based political analyst Arun K Pandey.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra which started from Kanyakumari on September 7 will culminate with Rahul unfurling the national flag at the party headquarters in Srinagar. Rahul is also scheduled to address a public rally at the Sher-e-Kashmir Cricket Stadium on January 30.