New Delhi, Jan 25 Congress on Saturday vowed to launch a refurbished and all-encompassing ‘tirth yatra’ for the senior citizens, if it is elected to power, and promised that all sections including the Dalits, downtrodden and marginalised will enjoy benefits of the dole-out.
The party also slammed the incumbent AAP government for giving it a ‘Hindu character’.
Addressing a press conference, senior party leader Udit Raj said that Congress, when elected, will widen the ambit of free pilgrimage and will include Buddhists also, making them eligible for allocated subsidy.
“AAP government arranges pilgrimages for those people above 60 years of age at its own expense but there is no such scheme for the Buddhists? Kejriwal discriminated but the Congress party does not discriminate among anyone,” Udit Raj remarked.
Further speaking to IANS, he slammed the AAP government for restricting the pilgrimage for the elderly to selected Hindu temples and not to other holy places with rich cultural heritage and historical significance.
"Why did the Kejriwal government implement a pilgrimage scheme, which included visits to only thirty sacred places including Vaishno Devi, Tirupati, Balaji, Shirdi, and Ayodhya,” he asked.
Further advocating Rahul’s pitch for caste census and equal rights for all, he said that the Congress government will ensure that the Buddhists, Dalits and all the people with weak backgrounds get the benefits of free pilgrimage.
“For the Bahujan Samaj, we aim to provide free pilgrimage to important religious sites such as Shri Sarnath, Lumbini, Gaya, Mahu, Chaitya Bhoomi, and Ravidas Sthal, among others," he told IANS.
Notably, the AAP supremo has been boasting about free pilgrimage for the senior citizens as its key accomplishment and also warning that a ‘wrong’ button press would stop the scheme.
The Mukhyamantri Tirth Yatra Yojana was started by the Kejriwal government in 2019 to take the elderly on a free pilgrimage. Under the scheme, the senior citizens are taken for a spiritual journey to many holy places of worship with the expense borne by the state government.
A day ago, Udit Raj also held a protest outside the residence of the AAP chief along with followers of Buddhism, asking why the Buddhist monks and priests of Ravidas and Valmiki temples were kept out of the ‘Pujari Granthi Samman Yojana’, launched by Delhi government last month.
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