Battle of Yatras – Is it going to be Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra versus Arvind Kejriwal's Make India Number One?

New Delhi: A turf war over who will trump whom in grabbing the opposition space seems to have started with both Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal kicking off their respective nationwide marches on Wednesday.

While Gandhi will launch the 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, Kejriwal will kickstart his 'Make India Number One' campaign from his birthplace Siwani in Hisar in Haryana.

The common mission of both the yatras is to oust the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The two parties are also in competition with each other to emerge as the main challenger to the BJP.

Both are in power in two states each. While the Congress rules Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the AAP is in power in Delhi and Punjab.

Kejriwal's onslaught in Gujarat has so far given the AAP a clear edge over the Congress in the run-up to the assembly elections in November-December this year.

The AAP was able to seize the first mover advantage with Kejriwal's several visits to Gujarat while Gandhi launched his campaign in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union home minister Amit Shah only on Monday.

Kejriwal has repeatedly claimed that the AAP's vote share has increased following CBI raids on Delhi's deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

The Congress has maintained that the aim of the Bharat Jodo Yatra is to unite India, come together and strengthen the nation.

Besides, the grand old party said it will seek to rally the common people against the prevailing politics of fear, bigotry and prejudice unleashed by the Modi government and the BJP.

It will also flag the problems of increasing unemployment, rising prices and growing inequalities.

The yatra will pass through 12 states and culminate in Jammu and Kashmir, covering a distance of nearly 3,500 km in about 150 days.

The Congress has also managed to rope in over 200 civil society members who have subsequently appealed to the people to support the yatra to defend against the systematic assault on the unity and democracy of India by the BJP.

On the other hand, Kejriwal's yatra will not be a continuous march but a staggered one.

The AAP has set five targets in this nationwide mission of Kejriwal. These are free and quality education for all, free and quality healthcare for all, equality and safety for women, jobs for all youth, and fair price for all farmers for their produce.

The stupendous victory of his party in Punjab earlier this year has buoyed Kejriwal to position himself as Modi's main challenger in 2024.

However, he will have to first upstage Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar who too is looking for a bigger national role after dumping the BJP and striking once again an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad.

Kumar had dumped the mahagathbandhan, comprising the RJD, JD(U) and the Congress in 2017 following his irreconcilable differences with the RJD over the allegations of corruption against its leadership.

Kumar had then claimed that he will never again have any kind of a tie-up with the RJD.

However, he has now fallen back on the RJD's support to retain the chief minister's post.

Kumar parted ways with BJP for the second time after he was convinced that the BJP was trying to break his party as it had done with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

The JD(U) leader has now launched a diatribe against Modi and the BJP.

That said, the massive traction Kejriwal is getting in Gujarat appears to have rattled the BJP. Political observers such as Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) claim that the only politician to have the capacity to challenge Modi is Kejriwal.

One reason could be that Rahul Gandhi has failed to emerge as a credible alternative to Modi due to his frequent vanishing acts and the coterie of foreign-educated MBA graduates around him.

The AAP is targeting both Congress and the BJP through its yatra.

According to Kejriwal,130-crore people of the country dream to see India as a developed and number one country in the world but because of traditional political parties and politicians, India was left behind.

If it is left to them, then India will remain backward for another 75 years, he claimed.

Why Haryana? Because the panchayat elections in the state, neighbouring Punjab, are scheduled to be held in October and the AAP wants to make inroads into the state through these polls.

There are 6,288 panchayats in Haryana that elect 62,022 panchs, 22 presidents, 488 members of zilla parishad, as well as 143 presidents and 3,080 members of panchayat samitis.

After Haryana, Kejriwal will travel across Rajasthan.

So, won't these parallel yatras hurt the prospects of the opposition parties coming together ahead of 2024? Only time will tell.