Lucknow, Sept. 25 -- A day after Akhilesh Yadav visited Rahul Gandhi's Lok Sabha constituency Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai on Friday said people are free to visit any part of the country and that Congress leaders too may visit the Samajwadi Party strongholds of Etawah, Kannauj and Mainpuri over the coming days.
"Anyone is free to visit any part of the country. He (Yadav) visited Raebareli, and there was nothing wrong in it. We too will surely visit places like Varanasi, or for that matter, Etawah, Kannauj and Mainpuri," Rai told news agency.
On Thursday, Samajwadi Party chief boarded a specially designed 'PDA Rath', his mount of choice to bounce back from two successive electoral reverses he faced at the hands of the BJP, for a visit to Raebareli.
As part of his campaign for next year's Uttar Pradesh elections, Yadav is set to travel across the state on the 'PDA Rath' to connect with the politically influential 'Pichhda (backwards), Dalit and Alpsankhyak (minority)' voters - the social coalition that has become a central plank of the SP's strategy.
Yadav is the Lok Sabha MP from Kannauj, his wife Dimple is the Mainpuri MP, while his uncle Shivpal is the MLA from the Jaswantnagar Assembly segment in Etawah.
The BJP on Thursday took potshots at Yadav's Raebareli visit, claiming that it was undertaken to demonstrate SP's political strength in the constituency and question the Congress' position there.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.