Amid the increasing number of COVID cases in Rajasthan, the Congress party is planning a mega 'Mahangai Hatao’ rally against inflation, with all its national leaders in Jaipur on Sunday.
The party has said it will follow the COVID protocol and has made double vaccination or RT-PCR negative report mandatory for those attending the rally. In the meantime, former mayor of Jaipur and senior party leader Jyoti Khandelwal has written a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi to postpone the event looking at the Omicron cases in Jaipur.
The Congress had earlier planned the rally in Delhi but could not get permission from Delhi police so now it will be held in Jaipur on December 12. The preparations of the rally are in full swing to make it a big show of strength on the issue of inflation against the Central Government. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary Priyanka Gandhi are expected to be present at the rally with all the other national leaders of the party.
The leadership of the Rajasthan Congress has told the ministers, party officials and leaders to ensure the presence of a large number of people in the rally and it is expected that more than one lakh people will attend .
The party-in-charge of the Ajai Maken is camping in Jaipur for the preparations and CM Ashok Gehlot is convening meetings with all ministers, frontal organizations and workers to make the event successful.
All this is happening amid the increasing numbers of Covid in the state, particularly in Jaipur. The city recorded 25 cases on Wednesday which is the highest in the last 5 months. The total number of active cases in the state are 236 and out of these 119 are in Jaipur. The city had recently reported 9 Omicron positive as well.
The Congress party has claimed to strictly follow the COVID protocol. ‘Only those who are double vaccinated or have the RTPCR negative report of last 72 hours will be allowed in the rally,’ said party’s state president Govind Sing Dotasara. He added that people would be given masks at the entry points besides being chacked if they are vaccinated or have a negative report.
In the meantime, the party’s leaders are not in favour of the event at Jaipur at this time. One such leader is the former mayor of Jaipur Jyoti Khandelwal who has written to Sonia Gandhi to postpone the rally in the light of Omicron and said that Jaipur has reported the most number of Omicron cases posing serious concern to the life of people.
She suggested converting the rally into a virtual campaign. Though she had to face the annoyance of some of the party workers in the party meeting on Thursday, she is firm on her letter and said that she wants the rally to be successful but raised a valid point.
