Rahul completes Kerala leg of Bharat Jodo Yatra
TRIVANDRUM: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s long march to “Bharat Jodo Yatra” from deep south to the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir concluded its Kerala leg on Wednesday with a huge rally in Nilambur.
He started walking from the Wandoor assembly segment in his Wayanad constituency in the morning to reach Nilambur, also part of the constituency.
They are staying in Kerala’s border town tonight and will enter Tamil Nadu across the Western Ghats in the morning and walk for six kilometres in the pre-noon session.
The 120 marchers led by the Congress leader will walk to Gudallur in the western part of the neighbouring Tamil Nadu on Thursday before entering Karnataka state.
Congress party’s general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, said they would start the Karnataka leg of 21 days from Gundlupet on Friday.
“They will stay overnight in the town neat Ooty before seting out on the 21-day Karnataka journey,” he told reporters in Nilambur in Malappuram.
“Today is the last day of the padayatra (foot march) in Kerala. They’ll stay in Gundupet town in Karnataka (near Ooty) before starting the Karnataka leg on Friday morning.”
Malappuram is the most populous district of Kerala which boasts of being the southern state’s first e-literate and first cyber-literate district.
In Kerala, he spent 18 days, out of which two were rest days, and he walked 353km.
Addressing a public meeting at the end of the walk on Tuesday, Rahul it becomes much easier when they have the support of the people.
“We get up in the morning at 6 am, walk the whole day, arrive here today now at 7.30 pm, and we are less tired now than we were in the morning,” he said.
“It is like swimming inside a river, where the river is pulling you along. There is a river that is flowing and we are flowing inside that river.
He said what he felt in Kerala was that they did not seek to spread hatred but unity to make it harmonious and as powerful as it possibly can be.
“Wherever I have gone in this beautiful state, I have seen symbols of this unity, of this harmony,” Rahul said.
The Congress leader said he felt like swimming in a smooth-flowing river while walking across the length of the state where he noticed there was no hatred, anger violence.
“Sometimes the water flows slightly strongly in one direction and maybe some people fall down, sometimes some people also get hurt, I have seen, for example, one policewoman, she fell inside a drain because there is tremendous energy in the river, sometimes it hurts somebody,” he said.