New Delhi: Prior to the Congress’ ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, party leader Rahul Gandhi will visit the Rajiv Gandhi memorial at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on September 7.
The Gandhi scion will be visiting the place for the first time where his father and the country’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991.
At 3 p.m., Rahul Gandhi will visit Vivekananda Rock Memorial, and also Thiruvalluvar Memorial and Kamaraj memorial.
At 4 p.m. in the evening, an all-religion prayer will be conducted at Gandhi Mandapam at Kanyakumari where Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin will hand over the Tricolour to the Wayanad MP. All the leaders will then walk to the meeting venue at the nearby Gandhi Mandapam.
The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. from where an official announcement of the launch of the yatra will be made.
On September 8, the padyatra (foot march) will start from Vivekananda Institute at 7 a.m. and will continue for three hours. It will resume at 3.30 p.m. the same day and continue till 6.30 p.m. Everyday, the yatra will cover 21 km.
The yatra will reach Kerala on September 11 and will continue there for 18 days before reaching Karnataka on September 30. The yatra will continue in Karnataka for 21 days.
In the yatra, the Tricolour will be seen instead of the Congress flag.
The Congress claimed that the padyatra is aimed eliminating hatred.
The yatra passing through 12 states will cover 3,500 km from Kanyakumari to Jammu and Kashmir in five months (150 days) and 118 leaders will participate in it. The tentative list of leaders who will participate in the yatra include Congress Youth leader Kanhaiya Kumar, Pawan Kheda and former Punjab Minister Vijay Inder Singla.
According to Congress sources, since the launch of the Bharat Jodo website, around 37,000 people have registered on it. The Congress is planning to add them as volunteer yatris in the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The volunteer yatris have been categorised into ‘Bharat Yatri’ , ‘Athiti Yatri’ and ‘Pradesh Yatri’.
–IANS