Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is planning to take his campaign against the Narendra Modi government on questions related to land acquisition and the distress in the agricultural sector to the hinterland, through a padyatra that may cover more than 1,000 kilometres.
The details of the route and the schedule have not been finalised yet, but one proposal under consideration is from Niyamgiri in Odisha to Bhatta Parsaul near Delhi in Uttar Pradesh. Both places are associated with struggles that Mr. Gandhi had spearheaded against land acquisition earlier.
But before he starts the long march, Mr. Gandhi is planning a short one in the coming weeks, in Vidarbha in Maharashtra, a region that has been in the grip of a prolonged farm crisis. Around one lakh farmers are estimated to have been affected by the recent unseasonal rains in the region that records a high number of suicides. A Congress functionary told The Hindu that the plans for Mr. Gandhi’s march in Vidarbha was being finalised.
The long walk will cover States in eastern and northern India where land is a contentious issue, particularly in Bihar, which goes to the polls in October. The Congress State unit in Bihar conducted a padyatra from Bodh Gaya to Champaran recently with nearly 500 activists participating in it.
Congress strategists are hoping to popularise the slogan ‘gareeb virodhi, kissan virodhi Modi sarkar’ (anti-poor, anti-farmer Modi government) in the states where BJP had done well in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Returning on April 16 from an eight-week sabbatical at an undisclosed location, Mr. Gandhi has plunged into politics that had turned turbulent in his absence. At the heart of the current debate are the changes to the land acquisition law that the Modi government wants enacted, diluting the rights of the farmers.
The Congress has declared that it would not allow any changes to the law enacted in 2013 while the party was in power and Mr. Gandhi has made farmers’ rights the fulcrum of his politics.
