100 days of Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul Gandhi, leaders walk on road to Congress revival

As the Bharat Jodo Yatra enters its 100th day Friday Congress watchers feel it has found some answers the party had been looking for on the road to 2024 but questions remain whether it will yield electoral dividends going forwardThe Kanyakumari to Kashmir foot march has also courted many controversies in the last three months and led to several fiery exchanges between the Congress and the BJP including on Rahul Gandhis evergrowing grey beard and his Burberry TshirtWith over 2800 km under his belt Gandhi has managed to catch the attention of his supporters as well as detractors and seen quite a few celebrities including from the tinsel town and academia walking alongside him from time to timeHowever some political pundits feel the party should have had more tangible political objectives for the yatra and questioned the party for skipping pollbound states of Gujarat and Himachal PradeshAmid questions over the yatra translating into any electoral dividend two recently concluded assembly elections turned out to be a mixed bag for the Congress as it was drubbed in Gujarat to its lowestever tally while won in HimachalAlso Read RSS suppresses women has no female members Rahul GandhiA clearer picture of the impact on the partys electoral fortunes would emerge in the assembly polls next year including in Karnataka Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan which were covered well by the YatraFormer Congress leader Sanjay Jha who had also been a party spokesperson said the Bharat Jodo Yatra could become a gamechanger for the Congress in the long termFor one it has revived the political brand of Rahul Gandhi The BJP cannot ridicule him anymore using their fake news malicious campaign Secondly the Congress has at last connected directly with the people through this mass movement he saidNoting that it will definitely percolate to the grassroots Jha stressed that the critical part from now on is for Congress to sustain the mobilisation through its workers who are galvanizedThe Himachal Pradesh result shows that the Congress can still pull off a win against BJP if it demonstrates the hunger to win Next year the electoral impact of BJY will be more visible in states like Karnataka Rajasthan Chhattisgarh Madhya Pradesh etc he told PTIWhile the yatras positive of enthusing the partys cadres has been acknowledged many say its real test remains its electoral impactSanjay Pandey a political commentator and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University said the yatra has given a glimmer of hope to the party and enthused ordinary party workers but whether that would translate into electoral gains only time will tellSushila Ramaswamy a professor at the Department of Political Science in Delhis Jesus and Mary College believes the yatra ought to have laid down more tangible political objectives at the startShe asserted that electoral politics is very much part of what a political party should be doing and questioned the logic of yatra not going to pollbound states of Gujarat and HimachalThe yatra has traversed eight states Tamil Nadu Kerala Karnataka Telangana Andhra Pradesh Maharashtra Madhya Pradesh and now RajasthanThe yatra will enter Delhi on December 24 and after a break of about eight days will move on to Uttar Pradesh Haryana Punjab and finally Jammu and KashmirIt has seen participation from a crosssection of society including film and TV celebrities such as Pooja Bhatt Riya Sen Sushant Singh Swara Bhasker Rashami Desai Akanksha Puri and Amol PalekarBesides participation from tinsel town celebrities writers military veterans including former Navy Chief Admiral L Ramdas Opposition leaders such as Shiv Senas Aaditya Thackeray and NCPs Supriya Sule and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan have also joined the march at various points in timeControversies have been part and parcel of the yatra and it started with the BJP attacking Gandhi for wearing a Burberry Tshirt allegedly worth Rs 41000 in Tamil Nadu to which the Opposition party had hit back with a 10 lakh suit barb directed at Prime Minister Narendra ModiThis was just the beginning as the Congress and BJP continued to trade barbs be it over the grand old party tweeting a picture of khaki shorts on fire or the ruling party taking a swipe over a video of Rahul Gandhi meeting a controversial Christian pastorEven Gandhis beard made it to the war of words between the two parties with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at a poll rally in Gujarat claiming that the former Congress chief had started to look like the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein drawing a rebuke from the Congress which said he sounded like a trollThere have also been times when the party has come under a cloud while the yatra was onThe Maharashtra leg of the yatra saw fissures surface between the Congress and its ideologicallyincompatible ally Shiv Sena after Rahul Gandhi attacked V D Savarkar over his mercy petitions to the BritishDuring the Madhya Pradesh leg a crisis erupted in the partys Rajasthan unit the yatras next destination when in an interview Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot slammed his former deputy Sachin Pilot and called him a gaddar traitorThe matter was resolved with party general secretary K C Venugopal brokering an uneasy truce just ahead of the yatra entering the desert stateThough the jury is still out on whether the Congress last throw of the dice will pay electoral dividends it seems the partys yatris continue to believe in the mantra if yatra be the food of love walk onThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever