Kolkata: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra rally in Jalpaiguri town in northern West Bengal on Sunday displayed Congress-Left Front unity for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, as several CPI-M activists holding red flags with the party insignia of hammer, sickle, and star were seen in attendance.
There was no participation from Trinamool Congress despite repeated invitations from the national-level Congress leaders to the state’s ruling party.
However, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, who accompanied Rahul Gandhi in the rally, is still hopeful of participation of Chief Minister Mamata Banrjee at Nyay Yatra at a later stage.
“I am hopeful of Mamata Banerjee participating in the rally when it will enter Malda district in the next phase,” Ramesh said.
However, rebel state Congress leader and lawyer Koustav Bagchi appealed to Rahul Gandhi and party President Mallikarjun Kharge to take lessions from the Nitish Kumar episode while extending gestures of friendship towards as Trinamool as “Mamata Banerjee shares the same political DNA like that of Nitish Kumar”.
On Sunday, Hamro Party founder Ajay Edwards too participated in the Nyay Yatra rally with his supporters accompanying him with party flags.
From the rally Edwards gave a call for unity of all anti- BJP forces in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
After the rally entered the Siliguri town, Gandhi addressed the rally and said that the kind of support from the common man he had witnessed after entering Bengal was simply unimaginable. He also gave a call that the movement for change of regime at the national level should start from West Bengal only as the people from the state including the kids have a different kind of spark in them.
“Bengalis should take the role of uniting India through their intellectual powers,” he said.
–IANS