In Bihar, Congress has just set out on a yatra from Bhitiharwa ashram in West Champaran, holding aloft the slogan “Palayan roko, naukri do (stop migration, give jobs)”, amid enthusiastic, and overreaching, invocations of the Mahatma’s Dandi March in the same month in 1930. With assembly elections due in Bihar later this year, and having lost successive post-Lok Sabha face-offs with the BJP in Delhi, Maharashtra and Haryana, Congress knows that it must get moving — to survive, if not to win.
The pada-yatra commenced at the Bhitiharwa Ashram in West Champaran district, which was set up by Mahatma Gandhi a century ago, shortly after he led his first ‘satyagraha’ in the country, championing the cause of indigo plantation workers in north Bihar.
Bihar Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh was presented with a national flag, as a symbolic gesture, on the occasion by party workers in the presence of a host of leaders like national in charge of the students’ wing, NSUI, Kanhaiya Kumar.
Others present on the occasion included NSUI president Varun Choudhary, Youth Congress president Uday Bhanu Chib and AICC in-charge for Bihar Krishna Allavaru.
The pada-yatra is being seen, in political circles, as an attempt by the Congress to assert itself ahead of the assembly polls due later this year which the party is likely to contest in alliance with RJD and the Left. After covering various districts of Bihar, the pada-yatra will conclude in Patna.
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