Gujarat: As BJP woos Patidars back, Congress feels tremors

As the nation keenly awaits the next Lok Sabha elections in April-May, the ruling BJP is trying to woo back the powerful Patidar community in Gujarat at a time the Congress is seen as losing not only the gains it made in 2017 but even its legislators.

Three days ago, Ashaben Patel, legislator from Unjha in North Gujarat, resigned from both the Vidhan Sabha, the Congress and all other posts in the party, charging the state party leadership with ignoring her and unable to contain groupism. This triggered a wave of rebellion in the Grand Old Party (GOP) with senior leaders trying to persuade her and control the damage. Earlier, the Congress had lost its veteran Koli MLA Kunwarji Bavalia, whom the BJP instantly made a minister in June 2018 and make him win his Rajkot seat in a November byelection.

Reports suggest that some more Patidar MLAs are likely to jump the Congress ship ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. After Asha’s resignation, a group of five Patel MLAs, led by Leader of the Opposition Paresh Dhanani, rushed to New Delhi and complained to the party leadership against Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chavda on various counts.

To the party’s utter embarrassment, on February 4, police detained two Youth Congress office-bearers with liquor bottles while they were demonstrating at Kochrab Ashram, the first Ashram founded by the Mahatma, protesting against the burning of a Gandhi picture by Hindu Mahasabha activists in Uttar Pradesh last week.

On the other hand, the BJP is trying all the tricks to woo back the Patidars who formed the saffron party’s traditional vote bank from 1990s onwards. In a major outreach to the community, Gujarat became the first state to implement the Centre’s recent largesse of 10% reservation to the economically-weaker sections (EWS), that includes Patidars.

At a time when Patidar quota warrior Hardik Patel has ‘settled down’ in marital bliss, in yet another major push for the Patidars, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the Rs.1,000 crore Umiya Dham Foundation complex on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on the occasion of Mahashivaratri (March 4), in presence of an estimated 10 lakh devotees. Interestingly, the venue is close to Greenwoods Resort where Hardik Patel undertook staggered ‘fasts’ and received various Opposition leaders in support, to press for his demands in September 2017.

The two-lakh-sq metre complex, being raised by the Vishwa Umiya Foundation of the Kadwa Patidar community, is expected to rebuild the bridges between the BJP and the

Patels. After facing the Patidar ire in the 2017 Assembly polls, the ruling party’s Kadwa Patidar leaders took out a Ma Umiya Yatra across the state to pacify the community.

In contrast, the Congress may have lost the early gains made by party chief Rahul Gandhi in 2017. Ironically, Congresss MLA Alpesh Thakore, who, only a year ago, sat beside Gandhi in all rallies in Gujarat, has virtually turned into a persona non-grata in his own party after his exhortations against migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar forced them out of Gujarat in their thousands in October 2018. Subsequently, Bihar Congress virtually banned its AICC in-charge Thakore’s entry in that state and Gujarat Congress leadership also distanced itself from his utterances.

Thakore has had a meteoric rise after his outfit Gujarat Kshatriya Thakore Sena (GKTS) organized successful protests against the BJP Government since 2015. But, on February 3, he faced revolt as his former close associate, Ramesh Thakore, split away to lead a new outfit, Royal Kshatriya Thakore Sena (RKTS), charging Alpesh with dictatorship and ignoring the community’s interests.

After the ‘taming’ of the two stormy petrels—Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakore—Jignesh Mevani, the only youth leader of the triumvirate, has remained in the Gujarat political fray to challenge hold of the two major political parties. A lawyer by profession and a mature leader, he did not join the Congress, unlike Alpesh, and won the 2017 Assembly polls as an Independent MLA. Unlike the two erstwhile youth ‘icons’, Mevani seems to be looking for himself a national profile, given the issues he has raised and the leaders he appears with.

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