PANAJI/MARGAO
The Goa Forward Party (GFP) threw up a surprise when its leaders led by President Vijai Sardesai accompanied Rahul Gandhi on his Bharat Jodo Yatra in Indore on Tuesday.
Sardesai along with his party colleagues Durgadas Kamat, Santosh Kumar Sawant and Deepak Kalangutkar traversed kilometres in the country’s first Smart City.
“I have honoured the invitation received from senior leaders in AICC to join the ongoing yatra. As a pre-poll alliance partner of the Congress, and out of respect for all those who have been walking across the country as a part of the padayatra, we joined Rahul Gandhi,” Sardesai said in a video message sent from Indore.
He claimed that the experience was humbling and overwhelming during the yatra. “Unlike the frequent decadent extravagant events of the ruling BJP funded at the cost of the taxpayer, the Bharat Jodo Yatra is a once-in-a-generation social movement of thousands of ordinary citizens who are walking several kilometres in the hope to truly unite the country once again,” he said.
He added: “Leaders of other opposition parties too have participated in Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo yatra to express their support for opposition unity. We too decided to express our solidarity in support of opposition unity.”
The GFP leaders claimed that they spoke to several people en route who shared the “same anguish which many Goans feel today.” Sardesai claimed that people have joined the yatra to highlight their issues of unemployment, discrimination, injustice, price rise, and the fear of losing their identity, language, and culture to the ruling government’s non-people-friendly policy. Sources said that Sardesai and his team met Congress’ senior leaders Jairam Ramesh, Kamal Nath and Digvijai Singh on the eve of the yatra.
The Congress party in Goa has refrained from making any comment on the development.
