Rahul to hold meeting in Panipat on Jan 6: Bhupinder Hooda

Chandigarh: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will hold a public meeting in Haryana's Panipat on January 6, a day after the Bharat Jodo Yatra will re-enter the state, former state chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said on Thursday.

Hooda said the yatra will enter Haryana from Sanauli Khurd village in Panipat district on January 5 evening. It will cross into Haryana from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. "On January 6 a public meeting will be held in Panipat," he said, adding that the yatra will pass through Karnal on January 7 and a day later it will be in Kurukshetra. The Yatra will take a day's break on January 10, he said. It will reach Ambala on January 11 and the enter neighbouring Punjab, Hooda, who is Leader of the Opposition in Haryana, told a news conference here. Hooda, who was flanked by State Congress chief Udai Bhan, said the yatra is against unemployment, inflation and other issues.

"This yatra is also a public awareness campaign against the politics of division as some forces make people fight in the name of caste and religion. This is the reason why the yatra is getting tremendous support from the people," he said. When asked if his party will ask Haryana government for foolproof security arrangements after Congress wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah alleging security breaches during the yatra in Delhi, Hooda said that when the yatra entered Haryana in the first phase he had even then spoken to the DGP and the government had assured about necessary arrangements.

Notably, Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra will resume from Kashmere Gate in Delhi on January 3 and enter Uttar Pradesh the same afternoon through Loni in Ghaziabad. The yatra, which is currently on winter break, will resume from the Hanuman Mandir in Kashmere Gate at 10 am on January 3 and enter Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad at noon. The yatra covered over 130 km in the first phase in Haryana between December 21-23 when it passed through Nuh, Gurugram and Faridabad districts. The yatra, a mass contact initiative of the Congress, started from Kanyakumari on September 7 and covered Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi in the first phase. Meanwhile, Hooda demanded a white paper from the BJP-JJP government in Haryana over "rising debt" of the state.

"The government has loans of Rs 3,25,000 crore and liabilities of Rs 1,22,000 crore. The situation has reached a point where the government is taking loans even to pay salaries to the employees. Due to this, there is a delay in getting salary to the employees many times," he said. Hooda said the government claims the debt is not this high and gives some other figures. "We demand a white paper over the issue," he said.

Speaking on the 3-day assembly session which concluded on Wednesday, Hooda said the government was running away from discussion on key issues. "Many calling attention and adjournment motions of the opposition were rejected. This government is shying away from discussion on burning issues," he said. The former chief minister said that the Congress demanded an increase in the price of sugarcane, but this too was rejected by the government.

"This season the government did not increase the price of sugarcane even by a paisa and kept it unchanged at Rs 362 per quintal," he said. Hooda claimed that during the Congress tenure between 2005-2014, the sugarcane rate registered an increase of nearly 165 per cent, rising from Rs 117 in 2005 to Rs 310 per quintal in 2014. "On the other hand, the BJP led government increased the rate of sugarcane by only 17 per cent in 8 years," he said.