Nagpur, July 18 (IANS) Congress MP and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi arrived here Friday on a three-day tour of Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, which witnessed a phenomenally high incidence of farmers’ suicides in the last three years and is currently reeling under a month-long dry spell. Immediately after landing at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport here at 7.30 a.m., the young Congress leader, on the second leg of his “Discovery of India” tour of the country’s hinterland, drove straight to Yavatmal, dubbed as the suicide capital of India.

Sources said Gandhi will steer clear of political crowds and bureaucrats as far as possible during the first two days of his tour. Police officers who briefed a Special Protection Group team at the airport Thursday night also confirmed this to IANS.

During his tour, Gandhi is slated to visit late social worker Baba Amte’s Anandvan leper-rehabilitation centre at Warora, Mahatma Gandhi’s Sewagram ashram in Wardha and Ambedkar’s Deeksha Bhoomi in Nagpur.

According to sources, Gandhi will visit the bereaved families of some farmers in Yavatmal district who ended their lives during the acute agrarian crisis and head for Anandvan in Chandrapur district Saturday morning after an overnight stay at Yavatmal.

Reaching Sewagram Saturday evening, he will spend the night in the ashram and arrive in Nagpur Sunday morning.

In Nagpur, the All India Congress Committee general secretary, who is accompanied by the party in-charge of Maharashtra Margaret Alva, will address a workers’ rally of the Youth Congress and National Students’ Union of India after visiting Deeksha Boomi, where Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956.