Delhi/Ghaziabad/Baghpat: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah and RAW ex-chief A. S. Dulat joined Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra because it re-started Tuesday from Delhi after a nine-day break.
One other notable participant was former Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Shiv Sena’s Thackeray faction.
Whereas Abdullah joined the yatra close to Ghaziabad-Loni border, Dulat walked with Rahul from Jaffarabad. Although they didn’t stroll collectively, Abdullah and Dulat — two essential figures in Kashmir — attending the yatra on the identical day comes at a time when the previous Analysis and Evaluation Wing (RAW) boss is making headlines along with his memoir ‘A Life within the Shadows’ through which he has devoted a chapter on ‘Physician Sahib’ (Abdullah) and in addition referred to Rahul.
The yatra started Tuesday from Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate the place Rahul sought blessings at Marghat Hanuman Mandir earlier than starting his stroll in the direction of the Loni border from the place the procession crossed over to Uttar Pradesh.
En path to Uttar Pradesh, the yatra travelled by way of North-East Delhi, particularly areas like Jaffarabad and Gokulpuri, which noticed communal riots in 2020.
Like her social gathering chief’s son Aaditya Thackeray who participated within the yatra when it was traversing by way of Maharashtra, Priyanka Chaturvedi was the consultant of her embattled social gathering within the Delhi leg of the yatra.
Congress basic secretary in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined her brother in Ghaziabad. As per the yatra custom, Delhi unit chief Anil Chaudhary handed the nationwide flag to his UP counterpart Brijlal Khabri when the yatra entered the nation’s electorally most essential state.
“Mere bade bhai…idhar dekho (My elder brother…look right here),” Priyanka stated jestfully to Rahul as she addressed the group in Ghaziabad.
“I’m most happy with you. All types of energy have been used, the federal government spent a whole lot of crores to tarnish his status, however he didn’t budge from the reality. Companies have been put behind him, however he didn’t get scared. He’s a warrior. Adani and Ambani purchased out massive leaders, PSUs and the media, however they couldn’t purchase my brother,” Priyanka stated because the crowds clapped in unison.
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Dulat walks hand-in-hand with Rahul
It was in Jaffarabad that Dulat joined Rahul. The previous RAW chief walked hand-in-hand with Rahul, which was sufficient to offer photographers their coveted click on of the day.
A former particular director of the Intelligence Bureau as effectively, Dulat was thought-about near former prime minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After retirement, he served as a particular advisor on Jammu and Kashmir to Vajpayee from January 2000 to Might 2004.
In a veiled dig at Nationwide Safety Advisor Ajit Doval, Dulat writes in his memoir that the NSA “in his previous days” was “by no means centered on Narendra Modi” and his favorite was BJP veteran L.Ok. Advani. “His loyalty isn’t a lot to the politician as it’s to energy. If Rahul Gandhi have been ever to develop into the prime minister and ask a youthful Doval to remain on as nationwide safety adviser, my wager can be that Doval would have stayed. That is even though Modi and Doval are literally a match made in heaven,” Dulat writes.
In a chapter on Abdullah, the previous RAW chief says that he all the time thought-about the Nationwide Convention veteran as one of the crucial clever politicians within the nation.
“He’s, to my thoughts, the tallest chief— definitely the tallest Muslim chief—that India has proper now. There isn’t a one who has been extra intently entwined on the coronary heart of each Kashmiri and Delhi politics than Physician Sahib,” Dulat writes within the memoir.
“During the last twenty years, Delhi has gone out of its method to misunderstand Farooq Abdullah. It’s a unhappy tragedy as a result of here’s a tall, formidable chief, with appreciable political clout and really brazenly keen to do what Delhi would really like him to do.” Dulat ends the chapter, saying, “Does that sound like somebody who’s anti-national? Dr Farooq Abdullah nonetheless has a job to play in Kashmir and like Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses, Farooq is set to play it to the hilt.”
Abdullah was among the many frontline Kashmiri leaders who had vociferously protested in opposition to the Modi authorities’s transfer to abrogate Articles 370 and 35A of the Structure in 2019. He was positioned in dwelling detention quickly after the Centre had introduced the transfer to bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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