Days after announcing the seat-sharing arrangement for Uttar Pradesh in Lok Sabha polls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is set to join Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Agra on Sunday.
This comes a day after the Yatra on Saturday resumed from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joining her brother in the yatra’s final leg in Uttar Pradesh.
She will accompany Gandhi as the yatra passes through Amroha, Sambhal, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Hathras, and Agra, concluding at Fatehpur Sikri on Sunday, the Congress said.
Earlier in the week, Congress leaders visited the Samajwadi Party office in the afternoon and invited Yadav to join the yatra in Agra.
Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai, senior party leader PL Punia, and others visited the SP office here with the invitation letter from party president Mallikarjun Kharge. “I have received the letter as Akhilesh Yadav is not in Lucknow,” SP National Secretary Rajendra Chaudhury said.
Yadav will join the yatra in Agra at 2 pm on February 25, he said. The two INDIA bloc allies on Wednesday announced the seat-sharing arrangement for the Lok Sabha polls according to which the Congress will contest 17 out of the 80 seats in the state.
Akhilesh will join Rahul and Priyanka during the Yatra in Agra just days after the two parties announced their seat-sharing pact for Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. After weeks of tense negotiations and hard bargaining, the SP and its smaller allies are set to contest 63 seats and the Congress 17.
Yadav’s decision to join the Nyay Yatra points towards a strategic move towards coalition-building and fostering unity among opposition forces in the lead-up to the crucial Lok Sabha elections. With both leaders sharing common ground on various social and political issues, their collaboration is expected to resonate strongly with voters in the region.
The Congress had said February 26 to March 1 would be break days for the yatra to allow Rahul Gandhi to fulfill his long-standing commitment to deliver two special lectures at his alma mater Cambridge University in the UK on February 27 and February 28.
He will also attend important meetings in New Delhi during this period, it said. The yatra will resume from Dholpur at 2 pm on March 2. It will then move into Madhya Pradesh and cover Morena, Gwalior, Shivpuri, Guna, Shajapur, and Ujjain among other districts of the state.
On March 5, Rahul Gandhi will pay obeisance at the Shri Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain. He had offered prayers at the temple on November 29, 2022, during his Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, which started in Manipur on January 14, is scheduled to cover 6,713 km in 67 days, passing through 110 districts in 15 states, before culminating in Mumbai on March 20.
(With PTI inputs)
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