As Rahul Gandhi walking through north India for the Bharat Jodo Yatra in his white t-shirt despite the winter chill continues to hog the limelight, the Congress leader on Monday said that he had made up his mind to wear only his t-shirt during the yatra after he met three poor girls who were “shivering due to the cold” in torn clothes in Madhya Pradesh.
“People ask me why I am wearing this white T-shirt… Do I not feel cold? I will tell you the reason. When the yatra began… in Kerala, it was hot and humid. But when we entered Madhya Pradesh, it was slightly cold,” Rahul said.
“In the morning, when we started the yatra at 6 AM, three poor children came running to me. As soon as I held one child, she was shivering due to the cold. She was wearing a thin shirt. That day I had decided, till the time I am not shivering in the cold, I will continue to wear this t-shirt. When I really feel the cold, and suffer immense hardships, only then will I wear a sweater… Not before that,” Gandhi said, while addressing a street corner meeting in Haryana’s Ambala on Monday evening.
Gandhi, who is an MP from Wayanad, added, “I want to give a message to the three girls that when you feel cold, even Rahul Gandhi will feel cold. The day when you will wear a sweater, that day even Rahul Gandhi will wear a sweater.”
The Bharat Jodo Yatra which started from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 7, is currently passing through Haryana. The march will end in Srinagar on January 30 with Gandhi hoisting the national flag.
The ambitious 3,500-km march led by Gandhi has covered the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. It will next pass through Punjab and Himachal Pradesh before entering Jammu and Kashmir.
Earlier, during the Uttar Pradesh leg of the yatra, Gandhi had said that the media is talking about his t-shirt, but no one is taking notice of the “poor farmers and labourers walking along with him in torn clothes”.
“My being in T-shirt is not a real question, the real question is why are the farmers, poor labourers of the country and their children are in torn clothes, T-shirts and without sweaters,” Gandhi had said in Bhagpat.