Rahul Gandhi Visits Ayodhya, but Skips Ram Janmabhoomi

After a gap of 26 years, someone from Gandhi-Nehru family visited Ayodhya. Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited Ayodhya as part of his ongoing Kisan Mahayatra’. Interestingly, he did not visit Ram Janmabhoomi Complex, whose gates his father had allowed to be opened in mid-1980s.

He made a brief stopover at Hariman Garhi, where he met Mahant Gyan Das. Rahul will visit Kichaucha Dargah Sharif at Ambedkarnagar in the evening and would meet the farmers in Faizabad at Ramlila grounds in Poorabazaar.

Late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was scheduled to visit the temple in 1990 when he was on his ‘Sadbhavna Yatra’ to Ayodhya, but the programme was called off at the last moment as he had to fly back to Lucknow and it was getting dark.

Late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was scheduled to visit the temple in 1990 when he was on his ‘Sadbhavna Yatra’ to Ayodhya, but the programme was called off at the last moment as he had to fly back to Lucknow and it was getting dark.

This has been very much his routine in the last three days of the 2,500-km-long Yatra which is to take him, in a special modelled, air conditioned bus, to more than 223 assembly constituencies in the state.

Uttar Pradesh is scheduled to elect a new government early next year. Congress has 28 legislators in the present assembly and a recent survey has predicted that the party would slip further in numbers. The party has hired election strategist Prashant Kishore to pep up the campaign and to secure a better outcome at the hustings.