NEW DELHI, 11 September 2004 — The fiery saffron-clad leader of India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Uma Bharati yesterday began a 3,000-km march across six states centered on the Indian flag yesterday with a stinging attack on Congress party President Sonia Gandhi.

Analysts see it as a major campaign by the BJP to woo voters, especially in the wake of upcoming state assembly elections to be held in Maharashtra in October.

Bharati’s16-day journey will move across six states, including Maharashtra, where she will spend six days.

Bharati set out from a key landmark of Hubli to the Jallianwala Bagh ground in distant Amritsar city, after accepting from party leader L.K. Advani an earlier version of the national flag designed way back in 1907.

Others among the 5,000-strong crowd that braved a constant drizzle to cheer her with slogans of “Bharat Mata ki Jai!” waved scores of Indian flags. The fiery politician, who was jailed here from Aug. 25 to Sep. 6 over a 10-year-old rioting case involving the tricolor, hit out at Sonia calling her a foreigner who failed to understand Indian values.

“This yatra is not for election, not for vote bank, this is for the honor of the tricolor and to uphold the spirit of nationalism,” Bharati thundered, speaking in Hindi in the heart of Hubli town.

“We will not allow Indians to be divided in the name of the national flag or nationalism. The Congress wants to misuse the flag to instill fear among Muslims,” she said.

Bharati denounced the Italy-born Sonia as a “foreigner” and said that Indian soldiers died in large numbers fighting Pakistan in the Kargil hills of Jammu and Kashmir in 1999 to defend the Indian flag.

“I want to ask (Karnataka Chief Minister) Dharam Singh: Is it a crime to hoist the Indian flag? If it is not, why have such unprecedented security measures been taken today? Why these barricades and the fear psychosis?

“If we can’t hoist the Indian flag in our own country, where will we hoist it? In Italy?”

BJP leaders said they considered the morning drizzle an auspicious start to Bharati’s nationwide journey that will take her through several states, culminating in the Jallianwala Bagh ground in Amritsar where British troops shot dead hundreds of Indians in 1919.

Yesterday’s yatra began after Advani and Bharati garlanded a statue of “Veer” Kittur Rani Chennamma, close to the controversial Idgah ground here where Bharati’s legal troubles began in 1994.

It was at the ground that Bharati forcibly hoisted the Indian flag a decade earlier, sparking clashes and police forcing that killed six people.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission yesterday held a meeting of poll observers here to discuss arrangements for assembly polls in Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh, as also by-elections to four parliamentary seats and 40 assembly constituencies across 12 states.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami told reporters that the commission would also keep a close watch on Bharati’s yatra. He said that the EC was in touch with local administration in the state and warned that action would be taken if the yatra stirred up any trouble.