Barely a couple of months before the Lok Sabha elections and just over a month after the Congress was decimated in the Assembly elections in three heartland states, Rahul Gandhi will kickstart his Manipur to Mumbai Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Thoubal near Imphal on Sunday.

While the Congress said it was not a poll yatra, the list of the Lok Sabha constituencies Rahul’s Yatra 2.0 would pass through indicated that the party is heavily focusing on the Hindi regions.

Of about 100 Lok Sabha seats the Yatra would criss-cross, as per a tentative list The Indian Express has seen, as many as 58 are in the Hindi-speaking states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Rajasthan. In UP alone, the Yatra would pass through 28 Lok Sabha segments, among them Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi constituency, Rae Bareli, Amethi, Allahabad, Phulpur and Lucknow.

The Yatra would largely avoid the strongholds of the key INDIA constituent Samajwadi Party (SP) – including Kannauj, Azamgarh, Etawah, Mainpuri and Firozabad even though it would still cross the SP bastions like Rampur, Sambhal and Badaun – as the Congress feels the Akhilesh Yadav-led party is strong enough to challenge the BJP in its turf.

The Yatra will spend the maximum number of days – 11 – in UP – the politically most-crucial state with 80 seats where the Congress has failed to make a mark in the last two Lok Sabha elections.

The Yatra will pass through 28 seats in UP – including Chandauli, Varanasi, Machhlishahr, Jaunpur, Phulpur, Allahabad, Bhadohi, Pratapgarh, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Lucknow, Mohanlalganj, Hardoi, Sitapur, Dhaurahra, Shahjahanpur, Aonla, Bareilly, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambal, Amroha, Aligarh, Badaun, Bulandshahr, Hathras and Agra.

In many states, the Yatra would focus on seats where the Congress still has some strength. In Maharashtra, it would pass through the strongholds of both the party and Uddhav Thackery-led Shiv Sena faction, hoping that the allies can make an impact in the polls together.

Congress sources said the biggest test of the Yatra would be the participation of INDIA allies in five states – it will pass through West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, UP and Maharashtra before culminating in Mumbai in the third week of March.

“We have been meeting in five star hotels and on Zoom…now the test is whether we will be seen together on the ground. If in the five states the allies join the Yatra and the cohesion and camaraderie is evident, then we will be able to create an impact,” a Congress leader said. The party is not clear whether TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would join the Yatra at some point when it passes through her state.

The Yatra would cut through 10 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal – Cooch Behar, Alipurduars, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Jangipur, Murshidabad, Baharampur and Birbhum. The Congress is locked in a tussle with the TMC over seat-sharing, with the latter agreeing to concede the Congress only its two sitting seats – Malda Dakshin and Baharampur.

After UP, the Yatra will pass through most number of seats in Bengal and Maharashtra. It will cross as many as 10 seats – Nandurbar, Dindori, Dhule, Nashik, Bhiwandi, Kalyan, Thane, Mumbai-North Central, Mumbai North East, Mumbai South-Central – in Maharashtra.

There will be a focus on the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) seats too. Overall, the Yatra will pass through 30 reserved seats – including 13 SC and 17 ST seats – across several states.

In Assam, where the Yatra will enter after Manipur and Nagaland, it will cross seats like Jorhat, Kaliabor, Lakhimpur, Tezpur, Nawgong, Gauhati, Barpeta and Dhubri – four of which are with the BJP.

The Yatra’s clear focus is the heartland, where the grand old party had been once strong. In Bihar, it will pass through Congress’s sitting seat of Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia, Katihar, Aurangabad, Karakat, Sasaram and Buxar.

In Jharkhand, it will touch seats like Giridih, Dhanbad, Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dumka, Khunti, Singhbhum and Palamu – seven of which are with the BJP now. The Congress had won Singhbhum while Giridih was won by the AJSU.

The Yatra will pass through only four seats in Chhattisgarh – Raigarh, Surguja, Janjgir-Champa and Korba.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Yatra will pass Guna and Gwalior – the bastions of senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and Union minister and ex-Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia – besides Morena, Rajgarh, Dewas, Ujjain and Ratlam.

On the eve of the Yatra, the Congress said it was an “ideological Yatra” and not an electoral one. “This is a Yatra by a political party. It is an ideological yatra and not an electoral one”, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said here. The biggest challenge before the country is that it is facing an ideology which believes in polarisation, economic inequalities and political authoritarianism, he said.

The Yatra, which will traverse 6,713 km, mostly in buses but also on foot, covering 15 states, 110 districts, 337 Assembly segments and 100 Lok Sabha seats in 67 days, will be flagged off from a private ground in Manipur’s Thoubal district, instead of Imphal, the party’s initial choice. Before starting the Yatra, Rahul will pay homage to the martyrs at the Khongjom war memorial, built in memory of martyrs of the last Anglo-Manipur war that took place in 1891.