Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that he will participate in the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli or Amethi.

The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is a large-scale outreach programme of the Congress led by party leader Rahul Gandhi. The Lok Sabha MP is slated to travel 6,200 kms across 15 states. The march began from Manipur and is presently in Odisha.

Samajwadi Party is part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance or the INDIA bloc, which is a group of 28 Opposition parties that have come together to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

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On Tuesday, Yadav said that he received an invitation to participate in the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

“I hope that Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra will be successful after entering Uttar Pradesh,” Yadav said in a letter addressed to Kharge. “I will participate in the march either in Raebareli or Amethi. I hope that the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will join the strategy of [backward classes, Dalits and minorities] and will take the movement of our social justice and mutual harmony forward.”

The development comes two days after Yadav had said that his party does not receive invitations for several “big events” when a reporter had asked him whether he would join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.

However, soon after Yadav’s comments, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the route and arrangements for the Uttar Pradesh leg of the march would be finalised in detail in one or two days.