Rahul Gandhi’s January 28 Jaipur rally to focus on youth, unemployment

Rahul Gandhi’s rally in the Pink City of Jaipur on January 28 will focus on the youth and the unemployed. Congress leaders are asking young people to join the rally to unite the youth against the environment of fear that has been created in the universities that have witnessed violence in recent time.

Avinash Pande, AICC general secretary, and the trio of state health minister Raghu Sharma, transport minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas and Chief Whip Mahesh Joshi have been entrusted with the responsibility to muster the support of the youth.

Rahul Gandhi’s rally here is a very significant one as the Ashok Gehlot government, after Punjab and Kerala, has decided to pass a resolution in the Vidhan Sabha against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). After Rahul Gandhi's rally, both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are also likely to follow suit and pass Assembly resolutions against CAA.

The party is keen to hold organized rallies against CAA. The all-party peace march taken out on December 22 drew a lot of praise from the party’s leadership and the party is keen to replicate the Jaipur march under Gehlot as a model in various states.

Both Gehlot and Avinash Pande worked hard to impress upon the party’s leadership in Delhi to plan special strategies to oppose CAA in Congress-ruled states and involve the youth and the unemployed in the protest rallies.

Four days prior to Rahul Gandhi’s rally, the specially convened Vidhan Sabha will pass the resolution against CAA. The basic purpose of convening the Assembly session is to extend the reservation to the SCs and STs for a period of another 10 years and the Assembly will put its stamp on the extension before January 25.

Four MLAs of the Congress from the minority community have written to the Chief Minister expressing their concern about CAA. They had stressed on passing a resolution against CAA in the Assembly.

Rahul Gandhi’s rally is also expected to benefit the party when the process of panchayat elections is underway in Rajasthan. The party, in the December 2020 local bodies’ election, performed better than the BJP and the idea of holding the rally in Jaipur is also to unite the youth prior to the municipal corporation elections in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota where the party hopes to gain power. The Congress is likely to sweep the panchayat polls and it aims to win the municipal corporation polls to further consolidate its position.

The political scenario in the state has changed after the Lok Sabha election when the party was drubbed and lost all the 25 seats to the BJP. But the youth got back into the Congress fold that worked wonders in the local bodies election.

PCC Chief and Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot has completed six years as the PCC chief and he is the first PCC president to have completed six years in office. Prior to him, it was late Parasram Maderna who completed five years as the PCC president. Pilot took over the reins of the state in January 21, 2014, when the Congress went out of power and he completed six years on January 20. Pilot rejuvenated the party after the loss of the Assembly election in 2013 and was responsible for the victory of the party in the 2018 Assembly poll.

Yet, the Congress high command in Delhi, for better coordination between the party and the government, has set up an eight-member coordination committee headed by AICC general secretary Avinash Pande, Pilot, veteran MLA Hema Ram Choudhry, Dalit minister Bahnwar Lal Meghwal, former Speaker Deependra Singh Shekhawat, tribal MLA Mahendrajit Malviya and revenue minister Harish Choudhry as members.