Rahul Gandhi May Cover 10 Districts In Odisha During ‘Bharat Nyay Yatra’

File photo.

Bhubaneswar: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi may cover 10 districts in Odisha during the ‘Bharat Nyay Yatra’, starting January 14, Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Sarat Pattanayak said before heading for New Delhi on Wednesday.

“Rahul Gandhi is likely travel from West Bengal to Bihar and then to Jharkhand and Odisha before heading towards Chhattisgarh. If he comes from Tata, he can travel from Balasore and then visit Mayurbhanj, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Ganjam, Koraput, Kalahandi, Balangir and Nuapada. We will be proposing three routes but his itinerary will depend on the time in hand and security situation,” he said.

Pattnayak further said that the other proposed route would start at Mayurbhanj and then pass through Joda in Keonjhar district and Rourkela in Sundargarh district. “If Rahul Gandhi plans to enter Odisha from Ranchi, the Yatra can pass through Sundargarh, Jharsuguda, Sambalpur and Bargarh. We will try to convince the national leadership to choose the first route as it covers maximum parts of the state,” he added.

The OPCC chief further said the party is on its mission to win 90 Assembly seats in 2024 election and the focus is on 110-120 of the 147 assembly seats, in which Congress candidates lost last time by a narrow margin.

Bharat Nyay Yatra follows Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, which commenced on September 7, 2022, from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, and covered a distance of approximately 4,080 km before concluding in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, in January 2023. This 150-day-long Yatra will cover 14 states starting from Manipur in the northeast to Mumbai in Maharashtra and will include – Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and finally Maharashtra.

Rahul will be covering three states, which Congress recently lost to BJP, during this Yatra and is also likely to spend nearly a week in politically-significant Gujarat and UP, according to reports.