Advani's Jan Chetna Yatra to cover 100 districts

The Bhartiya Janta Party released the details of the Jan Chetna Yatra in a press conference held in the capital today.

Giving details, senior party member Ananth Kumar said that senior leader L K Advani would be spearheading the yatra, which would be flagged off on October 11, the birth anniversary of Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan, from his birth place Sitabdiara, about 150 kilometers from Patna.

The yatra has been divided into six parts, and it will be covered mostly by bus and by air to reach the northeastern states and Port Blair.

"A bus has been modified, and it will also have an automatic lift which would act as a stage from where Advaniji can address crowds in villages and where there is no stage," said Kumar.

The yatra is all set to touch about 100 districts situated in 23 states and four union territories across the country. It will cover 7,600 kilometers in the stipulated 38 days.

The yatra will reach Varanasi on October 12, and Mirzapur on October 13. It would then reach Rewa and Jablapur in Madhya Pradesh in the next two days.

It touches Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh on October 16; Nagpur on the next day, and would reach Nizamabad in Andhra Pradesh on October 18, and Hyderabad the day after.

Advani would be visiting only Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh on October 20 as the northeastern stop of the yatra. It will then head for Kolkata on the same day, and later to Ranchi and Port Blair the next day. This leg of the journey would be made by air.

The yatra would then be reaching Raipur in Chattisgrah and Sambalpur, Dhankanal and Cuttack in Odisha on October 24. Adavni would then head back to Delhi on October 25, and would stay in the capital until October 27.

The yatra will presume and reach Madhurai in Tamil Nadu on October 27, and Thiruvananthapuram the next day.

The yatra will then reach Bengaluru in Karnataka on October 30, and would also be visiting Mangalore and Udupi before heading to Goa.

It would make a stop in Maharastra in Sindhudurg on November 2 and Pune on November 3. It would reach Mumbai on November 4.

The yatra would enter Gujarat on November 6 via Valsad, and would reach Navasari, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand and Ahemdabad on the next day. There is a second one-day halt in Delhi on November 8.

It would then go to Rajasthan and from there, to Jodhpur, Pali, Ajmaer, Jaipur, Sikar until November 12.

The yatra enters the another poll bound state-Punjab on November 13 and would mak halts at Ludhiana, Phagwara, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Pathankot; and then leave for Himachal Pradesh on November 16 and will make a one-stop visit to Jammu on the same day.

On the last four days, the yatra hops between Amabala in Haryana, Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh, Dehradun In Uttarakhand, Haridwar and Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh. The yatra ends on November 20 in New Delhi.

"The yatra will go on between 10am to 10 pm daily, during which 6-7 hours would be spent travelling, and the rest of the time will be devoted to holding meetings and nukkad sabhas," revealed Ananth Kumar.

It is interesting to note that Advani and the Jan Chetna Yatra will not make a halt at either Somnath in Gujarat or Ayodhaya in Uttar Pradesh, both of which have been close to Advani in the past.

Kumar and BJP General Secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad defended the decision of not visiting these two places, saying, "We have already won in Ayodhaya, and will win the case in the higher courts too," said Kumar.

Prasad added, "We have been associated with Somnath for over 10 years now, we have achieved what we wanted to, and now it is time to move on."

It should also be noted that the yatra covers Uttar Pradesh, which is going for polls early next year, but only sparingly. It would reach Chandauli and Varanasi on October 12, Bijnor on November 18 and Rampur, Moradabad, Jyotiba Rao Phule and Ghaziabad on November 19, just before it culminates in New Delhi on November 20.

Kumar explained, "There are already two concurrent yatras planned for the poll bound state of Uttar Pradesh. Both these yatras begin on October 13 and one of these headed by senior party member Rajnath Singh, would be flagged off by Advaniji on the morning of October 13."

He also added that the chief ministers of all Bhartiya Janta Party ruled states or those ruled by National Democratic Alliance allies would participate in the yatra for as long as it stays in a particular state. Chief Minister Narendra Modi is then expected to be a part of the yatra when it reaches Gujarat on November 6.