Former Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi arrived in Wayanad (Kerala) on August 12, 2023, for a two-day visit, his first visit to his parliamentary constituency after being reinstated as the Member of Parliament from Wayanad.

Addressing a public meeting at Kalpetta on August 12, Shri Rahul Gandhi said that he had been in politics for 19 years but he had never experienced what he had seen in Manipur.

He said thousands of people among them had a similar experience. There is a complete divide in the State and murder, rape and looting were usual scenes.

“Two days ago I was watching the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament. The Prime Minister talked for around two hours and 30 minutes on a lot of subjects such as the Congress Party and the INDIA Alliance, but he spoke barely two minutes on Manipur,” he said.

Recalling his speech in Parliament, Shri Gandhi said that the idea of India represents the idea of peace among its people. “If in a State, people are killing each other or murdering or raping each other, that is not India. India is love and affection among its people”, he said.

Shri Rahul asked what the government had been doing in Manipur for the last four months. Modi had failed to stop the violence as he was not a nationalist.

The programme was organised by the Wayanad District Congress Committee.

For Congress You Are Adivasis, Original Owners of the Land: Shri Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Shri Rahul Gandhi on August 13, 2023, addressed an audience in his constituency of Wayanad where he claimed that the Congress Party believes that the Adivasis are the original landowners of the country. He accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government of neglecting the Adivasi community and further stated that calling them ‘Vanvasi’ instead of ‘Adivasi’ is an attempt of restricting them to the jungles and to hand over their forests to the industrialists.

He accused the ‘perverted logic’ of referring to tribals as ‘Vanvasis’ after he inaugurated HT Connection at Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Cancer Centre Nalloornad, Mananthavady in Wayanad district. At the event, he also mooted the idea of having mobile breast cancer screening units which can go to homes and screen women for the disease. He suggested the idea saying that he came to know that a lot of women here were being diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Having mobile screening units will help us catch the disease early and save their lives,” he said.

Later, he travelled to Kozhikode district and laid the foundation stone of the Community Disability Management Center (CDMC) at St. Joseph High School Auditorium in Kodenchery.