NEW DELHI (RockedBuzz via Reuters) – A cross-country march led by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi reached the capital New Delhi on Saturday, hoping to regain some of the popularity lost to the ruling Hindu nationalist party.
More than 1,000 people have joined Gandhi’s march against “hatred and division”, which aims to turn the tide for the Congress party after its thrashing by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 election.
The parade, which received a better-than-expected public response, will take a nine-day break in Delhi before commencing its final leg on Jan. 3 towards Srinagar in Kashmir’s northernmost Himalayan region.
Gandhi’s mother, former Congress President Sonia Gandhi, party leader Priyanka Gandhi and her husband Robert Vadra joined the march on Saturday.
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty controlled the Congress party for decades but also oversaw its recent decline. Rahul Gandhi resigned as Congress president after the last election. The next one is expected by 2024.
Sharing a photo of himself hugging his mother during the rally, Gandhi tweeted: “The love I got from her is what I share with the country.”
The ‘Unite India Rally’ march began in September in the coastal city of Kanyakumari on the southern tip of India. He plans to travel more than 3,500 km (2,200 miles) to reach Srinagar in around 150 days.
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Anushree Fadnavis in New Delhi; Editing by William Mallard)
