Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra In Gujarat To Cover 14 Lok Sabha Seats But Will It Help Congress?

Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is in Gujarat from today where the Congress leader will cover 400 kilometres across seven districts over the next four days. During this, Rahul Gandhi will offer prayers at temples and visit the historic Swaraj Ashram at Bardoli to pay tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He will also hold 27 corner meetings and six public gatherings before entering Maharashtra. Gujarat, once a Congress stronghold, has kept Congress at bay for the past two decades. In the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the BJP had bagged all 26 seats. The situation of the Congress is such in the state that for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it has agreed to ally with the Aam Aadmi Party, which is just five years old in Gujarat but is doing better than the grand old party. 

Nyay Yatra Route, Constituency

Rahul Gandhi's Gujarat leg of Nyay Yatra starts from Zalod in the Dahod district. Of the total 467 km that Rahul Gandhi will cover, it passes through 7 districts - Dahod, Panchmahal, Chhota Udepur, Bharuch, Tapi, Surat, and Navsari. The 14 Parliamentary constituencies include Dahod, Panchmahal, Chhota Udaipur, Bharuch, Bardoli, Surat and Navsari Lok Sabha seats. 

Exodus In Congress 

Weeks ahead of Rahul Gandhi's Gujarat visit, key leaders quit the party and joined the ruling BJP in the state. This came as a setback for Congress that is already struggling for popular and successful faces in the state. In the last three months, Navsari district president Dharmesh Bhim Patel, Porbandar MLA Arjun Modhwadia, former MLA Chirag Patel, MLA CJ Chavda and Ambarish Der left the Congress. 

The flurry of exits by the MLAs brought down Congress representation in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly has decreased to 14 from 17. The exit of Modhwadia, a prominent OBC figure, and Der, a prominent Ahir leader, left the Congress with no faces to represent these two communities in Porbandar and Amreli. Without them, the Congress is set to lose a significant chunk of OBC and Ahir votes as well. 

Trouble For Congress

Gujarat, which has become a fort of BJP, votes for the saffron party in unison and an exodus of senior party leaders in the state have created further representation void challenges for the Congress. The vote share of Congress is already shrinking in the state. The party got 32 per cent votes in the 2019 polls and 27 per cent in the 2022 assembly polls.