Starting Wednesday, YSR Telangana party president Y S Sharmila will embark on a marathon padayatra across the length and breadth of Telangana with an objective of bringing back Rajanna Rajyam, the glorious period of her father late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, chief minister of combined Andhra Pradesh.
According to her party sources, Sharmila will begin her padayatra after addressing a big public meeting at Chevella, the place which was sentimentally attached to her, as it was from here that YSR launched his Praja Prashthanam padayatra in 2003 that brought the Congress party to power in Andhra Pradesh in the 2004 assembly elections.
Though there is hardly any political space for Sharmila in Telangana, she has taken a daring step to go ahead with the padayatra hoping that she would invoke the magic of her father to emerge as a powerful alternative to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, if not to grab power immediately in the next assembly elections.
What is interesting in Sharmila’s padayatra is that she is planning to rewrite all records in the padayatras ever held in the country, including that of her brother Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, president of YSR Congress party and Andhra Pradesh chief minister.
Jagan holds the record of walking for a massive distance of 3,648 km over a span of 341 days, starting from November 6, 2017 to January 9, 2019 (including a brief period wherein he was hospitalised) in the name of “Praja Sankalpa Yatra.”
The previous record was held by Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu, who also took up a 2,808-km long padayatra from October 2, 2012 to April 27, 2013 across the state.
Earlier, Sharmila, too, took up padayatra for about 2,000 km from October 18, 2012 to August 4, 2013 across 14 districts of combined Andhra Pradesh in the name of “Maro Praja Prashthanam,” when Jagan was in jail in connection with a CBI case.
Now, Sharmila plans to break all these records by undertaking padayatra for nearly 4,000 kilometres across Telangana state.
Starting from Chevella, she would continue her walk for 14 months covering 90 assembly constituencies. She is expected to walk for about 12-15 km a day.
Like her brother, Sharmila, too, would mingle with the common people and win their hearts. She is planning to attract the youth mostly, apart from highlighting the welfare agenda of YSR.
Every day, she would conduct “Mata Muchata” programme at one place, wherein she would sit with villagers for some time and interact with them to know their problems.
The route map is being prepared in such a way that she would touch at least three mandals in each assembly constituency.
Meetings would be held to strengthen the party at the grassroots level. In all, she would address nine big public meetings, sources said.