General Elections Buzz: Union Minister’s ‘Insult to Rajputs’ Continues to Draw Ire

There are news reports that the Congress is likely to field influential Patidar leader Paresh Dhanani to take on Parshottam Rupala. Dhanani has earned the monicker “giant killer”.

New Delhi: The furore around minister in the Union cabinet and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Rajkot candidate, Parshottam Rupala, refuses to die down. The Karni Sena chief has resigned from the BJP and Rajputs are up in arms for what they say was a deeply offensive remark by Rupala against their community for having “roti-beti vyavhaar” or matrimonial ties and dining with the British, “vidharmis”.

There are news reports that the Congress is likely to field influential Patidar leader Paresh Dhanani to take on Parshottam Rupala. Dhanani has earned the monicker “giant killer”, having felled Rupala in 2002 in an assembly seat. It was Dhanani’s first electoral outing in 2002. Rupala, at the times, was a three-time MLA and agriculture minister in the Gujarat government under chief minister Narendra Modi.

Since then, Rupala, himself a Patidar leader from Saurashtra, has not contested and this could be his first election in 21 years. The Hindustan Times reports that Gujarat Congress working president Lalit Kagathara, with other party leaders from Rajkot, has reached out to Dhanani persuading him to battle against Rupala.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Pilibhit for Congress defector Jitin Prasada, now the BJP candidate from here. Pilibhit is Varun Gandhi’s sitting seat. It is considered a Maneka Gandhi-Varun Gandhi bastion, or certainly was. Both mother and son were missing at Drummond Inter-College grounds where Modi spoke. Varun has been dropped from the list and Maneka has been picked to contest from Sultanpur. Varun had written a letter to the people of Pilibhit some time ago and has been striking a generally defiant note, mostly since the farmers’ stir in 2020.

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or MNS (Manase), the fiery Raj Thackeray’s party, was strident in opposing Modi last time. Raj had held fact-checking rallies, and his call for ‘Lava re video’ or “start the video” became a thing in PPT-style takedowns of Modi. But now, Raj has held a rally saying he will support Modi.

Mid-Day reports that party workers streamed into Dadar’s Shivaji Park to hear their chief “declare the party’s political future. Little did they know there was more confusion coming their way. These karyakartas were brought by the party to the city from surrounding areas. Some of them came from villages like Peth in Nashik, as well as from the city. Then some came from Bhiwandi, Dombivli, Kalyan, and Thane.”

The report notes that “the crowd in the front cheered as Thackeray took shots at the media and the election commission, while the one in the back were not so impressed and patiently listened. Jaihind Chaudhary, a party worker from Bhiwandi, is quoted as saying, “The party has not been doing well, but leaders like him (Thackeray) sooner or later win without having to compromise with other parties. He does not like the politics of jumping from one party to the other, and what will MNS achieve by joining BJP? We will not be respected.””

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Modi referred to Congress as “kadwa karela” or bitter-gourd. He said that the “Congress can never change”. He was speaking in Chandrapur, the sole Lok Sabha seat won by the Congress in 2019. Toonists have had their say.