After a day off, the Bharat Jodo Yatra began on Friday. The 3,500 km march from Kanyakumari to Kashmir will take 150 days to complete and pass through up to 12 states. According to Congressman Jairam Ramesh, the party will proceed with a second yatra from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh if Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir is successful. The Bharat Jodo Yatra of the Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi, began on Friday from Kollam and was entering its eighth day. The Bharat Jodo Yatra, according to Jairam Ramesh, is unrelated to the Gujarat and Himachal electoral campaigns.

“We’ll cover nearly 3,100km in 150 days in the second phase. This is the longest march undertaken by any political party in the world. Earlier it was the one undertaken by Chinese leader Mao Zedong. If the yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir turns successful, we’ll go ahead with the one from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh,” AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh stated in Kollam.

Political parties questioned whether to take the yatra from States where the BJP is not powerful, and Congress responded. “Bharat Jodo or Seat Jodo? 18 days in Kerala, 2 days in UP. Strange way to fight BJP-RSS” stated a tweet by the CPM whose Pinarayi Vijayan heads Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. The Left only has a government in one state, Kerala. Despite working together with Congress to win the West Bengal Assembly elections in 2021, the CPM today stands as the major foe of the Leftist movement in the southern state.

In response to CPM, Jairam Ramesh tweeted: “Do your homework better on how and why yatra was planned the way it is. And silly criticism from a party that is the A team of BJP in the land of MunduModi.” After taking a break on September 15 for one day, the Yatra began today. On Wednesday, the yatra, which had its beginnings in Navayikkulam in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, finished its seventh day.