‘Personal views’: Trinamool on its leaders’ praise for Rahul yatra

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress on Monday dismissed remarks by its party leaders praising Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra as “personal opinion” and said Congress should unite itself first. Senior TMC MP Shatrughan Sinha and MLA Chiranjit Chakraborty had lauded Rahul’s yatra.“The Congress first needs to set its own house in order. Let it first unite the party, and then go for Bharat Jodo. Whatever Shatrughan Sinha or Chiranjit Chakraborty said are their personal views and not the party’s opinion,” Trinamool MP Santanu Sen said.Party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh also said that TMC has nothing to say on Congress’s political programme. “The Congress is conducting a political programme in the form of yatra. We have nothing to say about it. It is an anti-BJP programme, we want them to act. If you look at the yatra, there are many plus and minus points,” he said, without elaborating.Rahul has now emerged as the “frontrunner for the PM post” in the opposition camp, Sinha had said, adding that his long march is the “most historic” yatra the country has witnessed in the recent past. It could be compared to Lal Krishna Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra in the nineties, he had said. Three-time TMC MLA Chiranjit Chakraborty said, “The Bharat Jodo Yatra is a noble initiative, and there is nothing wrong with it. Everybody must support it.”The party leadership, however, declined to att-ach much importance to the comments of the two lawmakers. pti