Lucknow : People in lakhs turned up for Samajwadi Leader Akhilesh Yadav’s Vijay Rath Yatra in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh at 4am on Thursday after covering almost 350 kilometres from Pakhanpura, Ghazipur. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, along with allies Om Prakash Rajbhar and Sanjay Chauhan, had addressed the gathering around 1pm on Wednesday at the zero point on the Purvanchal Expressway.
Akhilesh tweeting a photograph of his supporters staying up till 1 AM at the rally wrote famous lines from a Robert Frost poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’: “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep…”
During the rally, Akhilesh attacked the ruling BJP saying, “We have yellow from Om Prakash Rajbhar, the SP’s green and red and soon we will have green and white from the RLD. We have multiple colours with us, unlike the BJP that just has one colour. Those with one colour won’t represent all and be able to do any good for you.”
The Rath Yatra, which took almost 16 hours to complete, saw huge support from SP supporters in all the ten districts that it crossed.
For the first four hours the rally could initially cover only 60 kilometers, because the people were pouring in large numbers at Purvanchal Expressway. The rally reached Mau almost four hours after the Yatra kicked off from Ghazipur and moved to Ambedkarnagar around 11pm.
It then reached the Sultanpur Air Strip on the Purvanchal Expressway post-midnight.
Akhilesh was welcomed by his supporters in Amethi around 1am on Thursday and then in Ayodhya around half an hour later. Around 2:30 am, the rally reached Barabanki. It finally reached Lucknow around 4am on Thursday.
Addressing his supporters in Lucknow, Akhilesh said, “This phase of the yatra has come to an end around 4am. I think this is one of the longest Yatras of the Samajwadi people, but don’t think the Yatra has ended because it will continue and will stop when we will see the SP back in the government.”
Akhilesh’s Rath Yatra is considered the lucky charm by SP. In 2011, the SP chief had embarked on a similar Yatra following which the Samajwadi Party formed a full majority government in 2012.
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