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 as it re-started Tuesday from Delhi after a nine-day break.
Another notable participant was former Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Shiv Sena’s Thackeray faction.
While Abdullah joined the yatra near Ghaziabad-Loni border, Dulat walked with Rahul from Jaffarabad. Though they didn’t walk together, Abdullah and Dulat — two important figures in Kashmir — attending the yatra on the same day comes at a time when the former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) boss is making headlines with his memoir ‘A Life in the Shadows’ in which he has devoted a chapter on ‘Doctor Sahib’ (Abdullah) and also referred to Rahul.
The yatra began Tuesday from Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate where Rahul sought blessings at Marghat Hanuman Mandir before beginning his walk towards the Loni border from where the procession crossed over to Uttar Pradesh.
En route to Uttar Pradesh, the yatra travelled through North-East Delhi, specifically areas like Jaffarabad and Gokulpuri, which saw communal riots in 2020.
Like her party chief’s son Aaditya Thackeray who participated in the yatra when it was traversing through Maharashtra, Priyanka Chaturvedi was the representative of her embattled party in the Delhi leg of the yatra.
Congress general secretary in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined her brother in Ghaziabad. As per the yatra tradition, Delhi unit chief Anil Chaudhary handed the national flag to his UP counterpart Brijlal Khabri when the yatra entered the country’s electorally most important state.
“Mere bade bhai…idhar dekho (My elder brother…look here),” Priyanka said jestfully to Rahul as she addressed the crowd in Ghaziabad.
“I’m most proud of you. All forms of power were used, the government spent hundreds of crores to tarnish his reputation, but he didn’t budge from the truth. Agencies were put behind him, but he didn’t get scared. He’s a warrior. Adani and Ambani bought out big leaders, PSUs and the media, but they couldn’t buy my brother,” Priyanka said as 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 former RAW chief walked hand-in-hand with Rahul, which was enough to give photographers their coveted click of the day.
A former special director of the Intelligence Bureau as well, Dulat was considered close to former prime minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After retirement, he served as a special advisor on Jammu and Kashmir to Vajpayee from January 2000 to May 2004.
In a veiled dig at National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Dulat writes in his memoir that the NSA “in his old days” was “never focused on Narendra Modi” and his favourite was BJP veteran L.K. Advani. “His loyalty is not so much to the politician as it is to power. If Rahul Gandhi were ever to become the prime minister and ask a younger Doval to stay on as national security adviser, my bet would be that Doval would have stayed. This is despite the fact that Modi and Doval are actually a match made in heaven,” Dulat writes.
In a chapter on Abdullah, the former RAW chief says that he always considered the National Conference veteran as one of the most intelligent politicians in the country.
“He is, to my mind, the tallest leader— certainly the tallest Muslim leader—that India has right now. There is no one who has been more closely entwined at the heart of both Kashmiri and Delhi politics than Doctor Sahib,” Dulat writes in the memoir.
“Over the last two decades, Delhi has gone out of its way to misunderstand Farooq Abdullah. It is a sad tragedy because here is a tall, formidable leader, with considerable political clout and very openly willing to do what Delhi would like him to do.” Dulat ends the chapter, saying, “Does that sound like someone who is anti-national? Dr Farooq Abdullah still has a role to play in Kashmir and like Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses, Farooq is determined to play it to the hilt.”
Abdullah was among the frontline Kashmiri leaders who had vociferously protested against the Modi government’s move to abrogate Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution in 2019. He was placed in home detention soon after the Centre had announced the move to bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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