Congress leader Rahul Gandhi walked into Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, the final phase of his Bharat Jodo Yatra that started in Kanyakumari in September and will end on January 30 in Srinagar.
As dusk fell and temperatures dipped, hundreds of people walked alongside the former Congress president. In a customary handover function, Punjab's Congress unit gave the party flag to a leader from the Jammu and Kashmir unit.
Welcoming him into the union territory, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah drew a parallel between the Shankaracharya and Rahul Gandhi. "Many years ago, Shankaracharya had undertaken a yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. And today you are doing it," the MP said at a rally here.
He said that today's India is not that of Ram's Bharat or Gandhi's Hindustan because people are divided on religion. "If we are together, we will be able to overcome the hatred of the present day," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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