Gurugram: Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Chaudhary Birender Singh and his bureaucrat-turned-politician son Brijendra Singh have announced to launch a statewide ‘Sadbhav Yatra’ from 5 October.
Birender Singh said that the yatra’s central theme was to reforge unity among the 36 Biradaris (a term used to describe various communities collectively), which he said, were divided by vote-bank politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Haryana.
“The BJP has been attempting to disturb this harmony for its own benefit,” Singh told ThePrint, pointing out that although urban areas are still sheltered as people live busy lives, rural areas—where these people live together—are suffering from divisive agendas.
The people, the Jat leader said, will be informed as to why it was important to bring the Congress to power for saving democracy and how the Constitution and the voting right of the people was under threat under the BJP regime.
The announcement of the yatra was made public at Adampur, Hisar on Sunday.
कांग्रेस जन अभियान के तहत आज आदमपुर अपने साथियों के बीच pic.twitter.com/HQAoYr79aj
— Brijendra Singh (@BrijendraSpeaks) September 14, 2025
Birender told The Print that his son Brijendra Singh discussed the proposal with Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who gave a green signal as well as offered full support from the party.
Brijendra, meanwhile, told ThePrint that the yatra was originally scheduled for Gandhi Jayanti (2 October) but was pushed back as Dussehra was on the same date.
The former Hisar MP explained that the yatra would be undertaken as a padyatra like Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and that the event would continue for the next six-seven months across all the 90 assembly segments of Haryana.
“We will start Sadbhav Yatra on 5 October from Danoda, one of the biggest villages of the state falling in Narwana assembly constituency. In the first phase of the yatra, ending 17 October, we will cover six assembly segments of Narwana, Kalayat, Safidon, Jind, Julana, and Narnaud,” he added.
The six assembly segments are part of the Bangar geographical and cultural region of Haryana, of which Birender Singh’s Uchana Kalan assembly segment is also a part.
“After a three-day break for Diwali and Dhanteras, the Yatra will resume 21 October, and the Yatra will go to Uchana, Barwala, Uklana, Bawani Khurd, Hansi, Hisar, Adampur, and Nalwa thereby covering 14 assembly segments in the first phase. The next phase will be taken after a break of two-three days from Nangal Chaudhary. Nine assembly segments of Bhiwani-Mahindragarh parliamentary seat will be covered,” he said.
The yatra, he said, would also address other issues like unemployment, which is among the highest in the country, forcing youths to take ‘Dunki’ route to the US and risking their lives by joining the Russian army and leaving for Israel for menial jobs.
Political analyst Kushal Pal told The Print that the yatra’s main objective appears to be the father-son duo’s attempt to reposition themselves within the Congress, a party that Birender Singh worked with for decades before moving to the BJP in 2014.
Birender Singh, the great-grandson of Sir Chhotu Ram, re-joined the Congress in April last year.
“It is also an attempt to regain the lost political legacy of Sir Chhotu Ram, who, though popular among Jat peasantry, has failed to provide the fruits to Birender Singh’s family to any great extent so far. Singh’s wife lost the traditional seat of Uchana Kalan to Dushyant Chautala in 2019; this time his son lost to a greenhorn fielded by the BJP,” the principal of Indira Gandhi National College, Ladwa added.
Born in 1881, Sir Chhotu Ram is remembered for his rural reforms that safeguarded farmers from colonial and moneylenders’ exploitation through path-breaking legislation such as the Punjab Debtors’ Protection Act, 1936.
He promoted inter-community peace and won respect not only from Jats in Haryana but also from Muslim Jats in contemporary Pakistan, where his legacy persists as an icon of rural empowerment.
Birender Singh repeatedly appeals to this tradition, presenting himself as a guardian of Chhotu Ram’s vision for united rural prosperity.
Beginning his political career with the Congress at a time when others were leaving the party in aftermath of the 1975 Emergency, Birender Singh was among just three Congress MLAs who won in Haryana, winning the Uchana Kalan seat—the two others being Shamsher Singh Surjewala (Narwala) and Kanhaiya Lal Poswal (Chhachhroli).
He won from the constituency five times (1977, 1982, 1991, 1996, 2005) and held the position of a state minister on four occasions. He was also elected to the Lok Sabha from Hisar in 1984.
However, due to several missed opportunities in politics, Birender Singh is often called ‘Tragedy King’ of Haryana politics. Considered close to late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi from 1989 onward, he was set to be made Haryana chief minister in 1991, according to his own repeated claims. However, Rajiv’s assassination that year changed the situation.
अपनी दूरदर्शी सोच और मजबूत इच्छाशक्ति से भारत को वैश्विक मंच पर एक आधुनिक देश की पहचान दिलाने वाले हमारे पूर्व प्रधानमन्त्री श्री राजीव गांधी को उनकी जयंती पर स्नेहपूर्ण नमन। 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/blFfdcKTYk
— Birender Singh (@ChBirenderSingh) August 20, 2025
When prime minister Manmohan Singh was at the helm from 2004 to 2014, he was alerted about the government’s decision to induct him to the Union Cabinet in June 2013, but it was shelved at the last stage. He had blamed his absence from the Union Cabinet on former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
On other hand, Brijendra, a 1998-batch Haryana cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, quit the bureaucracy in 2019. He won from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket, defeating Jannayak Janta Party and Congress challengers Dushyant Chautala and Bhavya Bishnoi. In August, he was made vice-chairman of the foreign affairs department of the Congress in August 2025.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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