Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joins Bharat Jodo Yatra for first time
Borgaon (MP) (PTI): Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra along with her husband and son joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by her brother Rahul Gandhi here for the first time on Thursday.
On the second day of the yatra's Madhya Pradesh leg, Rahul Gandhi started the foot march from Borgaon in Khandwa district.
Priyanka Gandhi, her husband Robert Vadra and son Rehan were seen matching steps with Rahul Gandhi.
Congress workers raised slogans in support of Rahul Gandhi and his sister and tried to come close to them, but police were seen making hectic efforts to prevent them from doing so.
Police personnel on both sides of the road held ropes as part of the security to Rahul Gandhi.
When the yatra resumed from Borgaon after sunrise, the crowd presence was less compared to the first day of its Madhya Pradesh leg, but later the number of people and vehicles started increasing.
Rajasthan's former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot was also seen walking along with Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi during the foot march.
The yatra will enter Rajasthan from Madhya Pradesh on December 4, after covering a distance of 380 km.
Pilot has joined the foot march at a time when demands for the change of leadership have been raised again in Rajasthan, before the entry of Rahul Gandhi's yatra into the desert state.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
