BJP cancels twin yatras

NEW DELHI: BJP on Thursday cancelled twin yatras of party president Rajnath Singh and senior leader L K Advani following the death of its general secretary Pramod Mahajan.

“The ‘Bharat Suraksha Yatra’ (of Rajnath Singh) will not proceed from Amritsar. It has been cancelled,” BJP National secretary and incharge of Singh’s yatra Vijay Goel told PTI on phone from Mumbai. Advani has also decided to cancel the ongoing yatra and it will not proceed from Dausa in Rajasthan, sources close to him said.

However, a formal announcement in this regard is expected to be made later in the day, the sources added. Singh’s yatra was scheduled to reach Delhi on May 10 along with the simultaneous yatra undertaken by Advani. Singh had begun his yatra from Bhubaneswar on April 6 while Advani started from Rajkot on the same day. The twin yatras, announced by Advani in the wake of the serial bomb blasts in Varanasi, were aimed at exposing the UPA government’s alleged failures on several fronts including internal, external, energy and food security, besides the “minority appeasement policies”.