Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, which is scheduled to start on January 14 from Manipur, will pass through seven districts of Chhattisgarh next month, a party functionary said on Friday.

The yatra will culminate in Mumbai after covering a distance of over 6,700 kilometres, passing through 110 districts of 15 states in 67 days, state Congress spokesperson Dhananjay Thakur said.?The yatra, planned ahead of the general elections, will cover about 100 Lok Sabha seats and 337 assembly segments, according to the party.?

The yatra is expected to reach Chhattisgarh after February 16-17 and it will cover seven districts in five days in the state, where tribals comprise around 32 per cent of the population, Thakur said. The party is committed to protecting the unity, integrity, constitution and democracy of the country, he said.?The Congress considers ‘satyagraha’ a strong weapon to fight for public rights and “Bharat Jodo Nyay Padayatra will prove to be the biggest and transformative satyagraha of the country since after independence”, he said.

According to political experts, the yatra will boost the morale of Congress leaders and workers in Chhattisgarh ahead of the Lok Sabha polls since the party suffered a shock defeat in the recent assembly polls in the state. The BJP returned to power in Chhattisgarh by winning 54 seats in the 90-member assembly, while the Congress emerged victorious on 35 seats, down from 68 in 2018. The Gondwana Gantantra Party managed to win one.?

Earlier, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had claimed that the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra would prove to be as transformative for politics as Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had won 9 of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh. The remaining seats – Bastar and Korba – went to the Congress.