Tag: Gujarat Congress

Gujarat: Congress Candidate Alleges She Was Stopped From Campaigning By Police

Sonal Patel, the Congress candidate from Gandhinagar – the seat Amit Shah will also contest from – alleged that BJP workers stopped her car and threatened her on April 8. She said her party workers in Sanand were also harassed into silence.

New Delhi: “I was stopped from campaigning. If the BJP is so confident of victory, why stop other candidates from campaigning?”, asks Sonal Patel, the Congress’s candidate from Gujarat’s Gandhinagar.

Patel, 63, is contesting from Gandhinagar, which is also being eyed by Union home minister and BJP candidate Amit Shah, for his second tenure – the BJP has, since 1989, been on a winning spree in the Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency.

In 2019, Amit Shah secured a massive victory, defeating the rival Congress candidate Chatursinh Javanji Chavda by over 5.5 lakh votes.

“They want to create some sort of record victory like in 2019. That is why they are using the police to create obstacles in other candidates’ campaigning routines,” alleges Patel.

Patel, also the party co-in charge for Mumbai and western Maharashtra, is solid in her struggle against Shah.

“How is it that there are security issues only for me in Gandhinagar, that other people can freely campaign but the Congress can’t?” Patel asks.

Apart from being stopped in Gandhinagar, Patel has alleged that Congress workers in Sanand were also harassed into silence and coerced into exhibiting non-participant behaviour in campaign routines.

Patel has served as a member of several architecture organisations. Before being elevated to the post of All-India Congress Committee secretary, Patel served as the president of the Gujarat Pradesh Mahila Congress Committee between 2012 and 2018.

For Patel, ever since she decided to campaign at the beginning of April, she was coerced into staying silent.

On April 8, her vehicle was allegedly surrounded and stopped by BJP office bearers, where she was threatened with dire consequences if she did not leave.

This added to the fear, due to which many supporters did not come out for the next day’s campaigning round.

Also read: At Launch of New Book, Christophe Jaffrelot Talks Moditva, Undermining the Rule of Law and Gujarat

Patel also told The Wire that Congress workers were being threatened not to put up banners. Congress banners have also been removed from several places, she said.

Sources have revealed to The Wire that various community and political leaders from the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency were being subjected to undue pressure from the state apparatus simply to reduce their involvement in and support towards Congress campaigns.

Locals have also alleged that anti-social elements have been called and instructed to disrupt voting on election day and to ensure that no rickshaws are available in the afternoon.

Regarding this mass movement of the state apparatus against several candidates who are opposing the BJP in the ongoing elections, Shabnam Hashmi, a social activist and human rights campaigner, visited six assembly constituencies – Sabarmati, Sanand, Vejalpur, Kalol, Ghatlodia and Naranpura – to see the ground reality for herself.

Upon observation and interaction with over 200 community leaders, ordinary people, Congress and AAP members and district level leaders, and some candidates fighting from other parties, Hashmi wrote to the chief election commissioner (CEC) on how the police, including the crime branch, were either cajoling people into becoming inactive or not campaigning for Congress candidates, or were threatening people with consequences if they did not agree to do this.

Some were threatened with “dire consequences of cases being filed against them or with [the] reopening of old cases of petty crime and turning them into big ones”, Hashmi alleged.

She noticed that while some were told strongly not to campaign for the Congress, others were told to remain at home and eat chicken and fish (‘zaroorat hogi to bhijwa doonga’ – if you need, I will send – one person allegedly said).

Hashmi also writes how meetings were held at the Karnawati Club with community leaders where crime branch and special operations group officers, the police, and one former and one incumbent BJP MLA respectively were present, and that they were told strictly to ensure that candidates are put up and nominations filed. She also alleged that money was “being offered openly”.

In her letter to the CEC, Hashmi wrote of how in 2019, Juhapura and many other Muslim areas in Ahmedabad had witnessed disruption during polling when anti-social elements supported by BJP MLAs and the police had snatched away election lists, thrown away tables used by volunteers outside booths and created a ruckus so that more voters did not come out to vote.

She specifically said this happened outside FD School, NK School, Bata School, Makdampura School, AI School, Sunrise School, New Age School, Sian School and Adarsh Hindi Vidyalaya, among other places.

Her letter also acknowledges how, in hundreds of places in the Gandhinagar constituency, hoardings with photos of the Ayodhya Ram Temple are up with text such as ‘phir ek baar Modi sarkar’, ‘Modi ki guarantee’, ‘Viksit Bharat’, ‘500 varsh baad bhaviya mandir’ and ‘Shri Ram Mandir – Kamal ka button dabao, Bhajapa ko jitao, Gandhinagar Lok Sabha show, 18 April 2024, Guruwar’.

Stating how Patel and others were harassed, Hashmi has requested the CEC to take steps to stop this harassment of local voters as well as of community and political leaders by the local state machinery.

Patel and Hashmi have both urged authorities to ensure that extra forces are deployed in the Gandhinagar constituency to ensure that people can vote peacefully and that on May 7, anti-social elements, the local police and the ruling party do not create a situation like they did in 2019.

Cohesion Versus Invisibility: The Contrast in Congress’s Campaigns in Himachal and Gujarat

With Rajasthan and Karnataka going to the polls in 2023, which model will the Congress follow?

For the crisis-ridden Congress, the victory in Himachal Pradesh will be a morale-booster, though its performance in Gujarat was disastrous.

In a nail-biting finish, the Congress secured a comfortable majority with 40 seats in the 68-member HP Assembly. In contrast, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, it secured its worst tally ever of 20 in the assembly of 182 members, as the Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a historic win with 156 seats.

In hindsight, the results aren’t surprising.

The party’s campaign in Gujarat didn’t match the effort in Himachal Pradesh, where central and state units worked in tandem to offer a cohesive vision to voters under the leadership of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and Rajeev Shukla, All India Congress Committee in-charge of the state.

The state leadership comprising Pratibha Singh, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Brahmin face Mukesh Agnihotri buried their differences and led a pointed campaign that focussed on 10 guarantees, especially the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, 1 lakh government jobs, and the implementation of the Har Ghar Laxmi scheme, which promises Rs 1,500 per month for women.

Matrix Ground Strategies micro-managed the polls from the booth level to the top. An official associated with it said that for the first time, the party reached out to voters multiple times so that its promises looked credible enough to trump the formidable BJP in a close contest. At the insistence of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, multiple surveys on winnability were conducted.

The three leaders made themselves accessible all the time, unlike the heavy-handedness that the central leadership has shown in previous assembly elections, in which its involvement undermined the state leadership. This happened because factions of the Congress sorted out their differences months before the campaign began.

Gandhi Vadra, Baghel and Shukla also gelled well, Congress sources said.

While Gandhi Vadra oversaw the campaign almost on a daily basis, Baghel and his aide, former journalist Vinod Verma, coordinated between party units and private firms the Congress had hired. The team ensured that ground-level workers remained accessible through the campaign.

As part of the micromanagement, the party created a war room to reach out to voters on various multimedia platforms. The energetic social media campaign was followed up by a realistic strategy to focus on 40-odd swing seats, where victories could deliver a majority. Big rallies by central leaders like Gandhi Vadra, Sachin Pilot and others added to the concerted backroom efforts.

The party’s Gujarat campaign is a study in contrast. Despite sensing discontent and fatigue with 27 years of BJP rule, the party conspicuously chose to contest on local issues.

Its state leadership was reluctant to invite central leaders, who it believed would create controversies and help the BJP to polarise the electorate. Candidates focused on winning their seats rather than forming a government.

A Congress candidate who expected to win but eventually lost his deposit had told this correspondent that the party’s campaign was deliberately muted, and that state Congress leaders believed that its social engineering formula of consolidating OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims would work only if candidates addressed their regional concerns through a door-to-door campaign.

The Congress campaign became practically invisible amidst the flamboyance of other parties, despite Rahul Gandhi having sounded the poll bugle in a big rally two months ago by making 10 guarantees to the Gujarati voters ― quite similar to the promises in Himachal Pradesh.

Also read: How Important Is Communal Politics to Gujarat? In Final Phase, State Faces Crucial Question

The Congress failed to offer a cohesive vision to voters and came across as an uninterested party lacking ideological clarity to counter the hegemonic BJP. Across Gujarat, people complained that the Congress had remained absent through the last five years, though it had 77 MLAs after the 2017 assembly polls. It wasn’t a credible alternative to the BJP for a majority of those who were critical of the ruling party.

The Congress’s social engineering formula also failed miserably. A more charismatic AAP took away its traditional votes, while the BJP entered its bastions. CSDS-Lokniti data shows that voters of the Other Backward Classes and Adivasis shifted their loyalty towards the BJP unprecedentedly, while Dalits and Muslims voted less for the Congress.

For more than two decades, the state leadership has remained almost unaccountable for its multiple failures, and the central and state leaderships could not possibly work together. Now, the Congress can try to be a vibrant opposition. That would be a good starting point for a party that still managed to get around 87 lakh votes, despite its colossal loss.

With Rajasthan and Karnataka going to the polls in 2023, which model will the Congress follow ― Himachal Pradesh or Gujarat?

To begin with, the central leadership faces the challenge of resolving differences between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan and D.K. Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

Madhavsinh Solanki Won 149 Seats in Gujarat in 1985. Here’s Why Modi Has to Break This Record

The BJP enjoys a ten-to-one edge over its rivals in terms of money, muscle power, organisational clout and a stranglehold over local influencers. So, we must ask, why has the prime minister gone into a nervous overdrive?

Experience and prudence caution us against believing politicians when they claim to tell the truth. This precaution becomes particularly imperative during an election season. But an exception needs to be made in the present case of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Last Sunday, when he kicked off the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Gujarat campaign in Valsad, he shouted and made his audience shout a number of times: “I have made this Gujarat.” A clever slogan laden with double meaning.

No one in the Valsad audience or beyond was in any kind of doubt that the “I” in the slogan refers to one and only one person: Narendra Modi.

Like a village moneylender, the prime minister has returned, at harvest time, pressing his claim to compensation and respect from an electorate who should be naturally and unconditionally grateful to him for having created a new and “vibrant” Gujarat.

Modi seems to be proclaiming: “I have remade Gujarat, redefined its politics, realigned caste and religious fault lines, reconfigured its impulses, fears, aspirations and memories. Gujarat is my creation and it belongs to me.” An elephantine ego gone rogue.

As expected, the Gujarat BJP promptly declared “I have made this Gujarat” to be its electoral theme song for the 2022 battle. A new anthem of megalomania.

The prime minister’s exertions in Gujarat, before and after the model code of conduct came into effect, are baffling. There is no way the BJP can lose the 2022 assembly elections. BJP’s election managers could possibly have a cause for worry only if a genuinely free and fair election would have been feasible; such a pious hope is totally unrealistic.

Indeed, it is possible to suggest that the BJP has already cornered every feasible advantage, legitimate as well as illegitimate. The Election Commission no longer pretends to be a neutral third umpire.

In the run up to the elections, a number of sects and katha-vachaks (narrators) – a kind of a proxy campaign – have been allowed to deepen religious sentiments. The Gujarat police hierarchy, especially in the big cities, is understood to be quite happy and untroubled in going along with the local BJP dadas to ensure that Muslims do not get to vote. Also, the returning officers can be relied upon to peremptorily give the ruling party a break in close contests on counting day; those pesky election petitions can be dealt with at a later day.

Also read: The Irrelevance of Muslims in Gujarat Elections

Then, pray, why should the prime minister go into a nervous overdrive?

After all, the electoral equation is heavily tilted in the BJP’s favour.

The BJP enjoys a ten-to-one edge over its rivals in terms of money, muscle power, organisational clout and a stranglehold over local influencers. The Congress, on the other hand, is rudderless; its so-called leaders are, as is their wont, a squabbling lot and are unwilling to put aside their petty rivalries in the interest of defeating the BJP.

And, in any case, it appears that every other Congress leader is only too eager to join the BJP – and the BJP seems equally eager and anxious to celebrate any and all desertions from the Congress’s ranks. In more than one way, the Congress appears to have been squeezed out of Gujarat’s political landscape.

The new kid on the block, the Aam Aadmi Party, led by Arvind Kejriwal, is seeking to present an alternative but is clearly handicapped by the absence of any organisational muscle and network. If anything, from a BJP strategist’s perspective, the AAP campaign can only eat into the Congress’s vote share. Many surveys also hint at this ‘vote-katva’ (vote-cutter) role. And, not to be left behind, that gentleman from Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi, is also threatening to nibble away at the Congress’s vote bank.

So again, we must ask, why this nervousness?

Perhaps the prime minister and his coterie know that the only possible opposition that the BJP could face can come from the electorate itself – wiser to Modi’s tricks of keeping them trapped in his corner. After more than 20 years of unchallenged and unqualified hold over the levers of power, from the Gandhinagar secretariat down to the taluka-level revenue official, the BJP is no longer able to apportion blame on to others for its indifferent governance and exquisitely amoral politics.

Could it be that the BJP strategists can smell an incipient “Modi fatigue”? For Gujaratis, this time has not so far shown the kind of excitement and eagerness of the past whenever Modi had come asking for votes.

The oldest trick – a Hindu-Muslim confrontation – has not clicked. Muslims, by and large, have remained unprovoked despite some deliberate prodding and probing. Now there will not even be an India-Pakistan T20 final, which could possibly be an alibi for instigating communal trouble. Of course, the judiciary could still pronounce a verdict in the Bilkis Bano convicts’ remission of sentence matter before the 2022 vote, thereby re-kindling memories of 2002 that the BJP could try to use to polarise the electorate.

Also read: How Gujarat 2002 Turned India Into a Nation of Pathological Liars

The BJP has already gamed the caste equations in Gujarat, as everywhere else. But juggling caste ambition and resentment becomes counter-productive at some point. And now, with the new quota for the poor, the caste card has become exceedingly tedious.

Ironically, Modi’s success at the national level has deprived the BJP of one of its most efficacious tricks: invocation of a hostile (Nehruvian) Centre, out to do the Gujaratis of their self-respect, dignity, autonomy and prosperity. If anything, the boot is now on the other foot. It is the prime minister and the Union home minister who are widely – and, correctly—perceived to be micromanaging the affairs of Gujarat from distant Delhi. The state’s chief ministers do not even have the luxury of complaining at being reduced to glorified section-officers, dutifully carrying out “orders from above”.

The BJP brass is confronted with a harsh reality: nearly 40% of the Gujarat voters have come of age after the defining 2002 anti-Muslim violence. For this segment of the majority population, the Muslims have already been ‘shown their place’. Thanks to the “Hindu Hriday Samrat” (monarch of the Hindu heart), that battle is won and done with.

This new “aspirational” segment wants jobs, meaningful employment, good governance, ease of living and the space for individual dreams. And, these new voters take with more than a pinch of salt all this talk of India striding confidently on the global stage under the inspired leadership of new vishwagurus.

Unlike the vastly over-impressed ‘strategic community’ and the permanently over-awed ‘national media’, the new voter has to live every day with the prosaic realities of the now old ‘new Gujarat’. They know Modi is seeking a mandate for a model of institutionalised lumpen governance.

Perhaps this explains the prime minister’s conjuring up of Gujarat’s “enemies”– a veiled reference to AAP – who are out to give the state a bad name. In the process, the prime minister is seeking a reaffirmation of all that he has ‘achieved’ in and for Gujarat – the good, the bad and the Morbi.

Yet, being a man who is so conscious of rewriting history, it must rankle Modi that he has not been able to come anywhere near Madhavsinh Solanki’s 1985 record of winning 149 assembly seats. This is perhaps his last chance. If the BJP fails to cross the Solanki line, it would be read – way beyond Gujarat – as a sign that the old lion is a fading king of the jungle that is naya Bharat.

As Chhattisgarh Govt Frames PESA Rules, Tribal Members of Gujarat Congress Spurred Into Action

The delay in the implementation of the PESA Act is likely to become a key campaign issue in the 27 seats in the Gujarat assembly reserved for Scheduled Tribes, ahead of the assembly elections slated for December this year.

Four days after the Chhattisgarh government, on July 7, finally approved the draft rules for the implementation of the revolutionary Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), which vests powers to decide on tribal community properties with the Gram Sabhas, the Gujarat Congress has immediately dispatched its tribal legislators, former MPs and leaders to the poll-bound State.

At long last, the rules were approved at a cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh, a state government spokesperson said.

In tribal-dominated South Gujarat, the Congress’s sitting legislators held a press conference on Monday at the party headquarters in Gujarat. The same responsibility was handled by leader of the opposition in the Guajarat assembly, Sukhram Rathva, himself a tribal from Chhotaudepur; Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Jagdish Thakor; former PCC chief Arjun Modhwadia; and GPCC chief spokesperson Manish Doshi as they addressed media persons.

The tardy implementation of PESA would be the key campaign issue in the 27 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) in Gujarat, which is poised to be the Congress’ mainstay if the party wishes to better – or even match – its 2017 performance, when it had won 77 seats.

Of the 27 reserved seats, the Congress won 15 in 2017 while its alliance partner, the Bharatiya Tribal Party, won 2 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed nine and one seat was won by an independent candidate.

The PESA Act was enacted by Parliament in 1996 to ensure self-governance for people living in Scheduled Areas. States were required to formulate rules for the effective implementation of the Act to strengthen gram sabhas in Scheduled Areas.

Also read: How a History of Broken Promises Has Let Down India’s Scheduled Areas

Chhattisgarh health minister T. S. Singh Deo, who also holds the Panchayat and Rural Development portfolio, told the media on July 7 that the Congress’s promise in the 2018 assembly elections to formulate rules for the implementation of the PESA Act was fulfilled on Thursday.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had made the promise to implement PESA in the state. Deo also thanked chief minister Baghel for approving the draft rules, which will now pave the way for the Act’s implementation.

“Under PESA, all sections of society would get representation in the gram sabha samities (committees),” he said in a series of tweets.

“I am very happy to share with you all that as per the intention of Shri Rahul Gandhi Ji, we had promised to implement PESA rules in Chhattisgarh in our Jan Ghoshna Patra, and it was fulfilled today,” the minister said.

“I would like to thank Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and my cabinet colleagues for approving the draft which was prepared after discussion with the national and regional public representatives of Scheduled Tribe communities, party representatives and senior social workers during the last 2.5 years,” he added.

As per the draft rules, there will be a minimum of 50% representation of STs, while Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC) and unreserved classes will also get representation according to their population, the minister said.

Speaking at the Surat press conference, former union minister Tushar Chaudhary, former South Gujarat MP Kishan Patel and sitting tribal MLAs Anand Chaudhary, Anant Patel, Punaji Gamit and Sunil Gamit, said at a time when the Adivasi community in Gujarat is passing through an existential, social, economic and cultural crisis, the BJP government is depriving them of their rights.

The Congress government in Chhattisgarh has demonstrated its party’s commitment to the issues of tribals and made the PESA rules, as promised in its Chhattisgarh manifesto, they said.

Rathva pointed out that the framing of the PESA rules in 2017 was, in fact, a negation of the very spirit of the law and was ultra virus of the legislation since the Gram Sabha had been vested with its rights in tribal areas only on paper. The final authority on any key decision remained with the state machinery, controlled by the district collectors and district development officers, he argued.

What is PESA?

PESA extends the provision of the Indian constitution to formalise the three-tier Panchayati Raj system to fifth Schedule areas with certain modifications and exceptions. While the 73rd and the 74th amendments to the constitution, passed in 1992, took the three-tier Panchayati Raj governance structure to rural and urban parts of the country, the tribal-dominated areas, listed under the fifth schedule of the constitution, were kept out of the purview of the Panchayati Raj Acts.

PESA, enacted in 1996, took local self-governance rules to the areas listed under the fifth schedule.

This article was first published on Vibes of India.

Hardik Patel to Join BJP on June 2, Says Party

Since Patil quit Congress, speculation had been rife that he would join BJP.

New Delhi: Former Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, who recently left Congress, will join Bharatiya Janata Party on June 2, the BJP said on Tuesday, May 31.

Patel’s move comes ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections due later this year. He will join the party in the presence of Gujarat BJP president C.R. Paatil, a state BJP spokesperson Yagnesh Dave told the news agency PTI.

Patel has been a strong BJP critic. In 2015, during the Patidar quota agitation, the then BJP government in Gujarat had booked the firebrand leader in several cases, including on the charge of sedition.

Patel joined Congress in 2019 and was later made the state unit’s working president. Since he quit the party with a searing resignation letter, which he made public on Twitter, speculation had been rife that he would join BJP.

In the letter, Patel claimed that Congress leaders had lost grassroots connect and were more intent upon ensuring timely “chicken sandwich for leaders who have come from Delhi.”

The BJP government had recently withdrawn some cases lodged against Hardik Patel and others in connection with the 2015 agitation.

Appearing to openly side with BJP, in his parting letter, Patel also accused Congress of opposing “whatever the government of India led by Narendra Modi did”.

With Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani and former Radhanpur MLA Alpesh Thakore, Patel had formed a trio of young leaders who had emerged BJP’s main challengers in Gujarat.

Thakore had left Congress and joined the saffron party in 2019. Mevani, an independent who supports Congress, has recently been charged in a number of cases, one of which a court called “false” and another for tweeting criticism of Narendra Modi.

What Two Successive High-Profile Exits Portend for the Congress Party

The developments in the Congress have given yet another opportunity for critics to attack the party leadership, after some dissent was neutralised during the recent Chintan Shivir.

New Delhi: The high-profile exits of Hardik Patel and Sunil Jakhar from the Congress have come on the heels of the party’s Chintan Shivir – a brainstorming camp in Udaipur that was aimed at devising ways to revive the party. The development will surely put the Congress leadership, especially the Gandhi family, in a tight spot. The leadership has been attacked by dissenters within the party and critics for not showing political acumen or steering the party well as the Bharatiya Janata Party deepens its dominance across the country. 

The Chintan Shivir, in more ways than one, bought the Gandhi family some time to prolong the status quo and at the same time sent feelers to political observers that the party has eventually understood the need for course correction. However, Patel and Jakhar’s decisions to part ways with the party immediately after the brainstorming camp are likely to upset much of the efforts put in by the leadership to bring the house in order. 

To be fair, both leaders had been showing signals of dissension in the party, and the leadership may not have played as big a role as much as their own tormented ambitions. 

Jakhar, the former Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president who lost the chief ministerial race to Charanjit Singh Channi after Congress Working Committee member Ambika Soni insisted on having a turbaned Jat Sikh as the top, had been sending out one critical tweet after another against his party. Following the Congress’s defeat in the assembly elections in Punjab, Jakhar had reasons to feel vindicated. 

Also read: ‘Gujarat Congress Busy Ensuring Timely Chicken Sandwich for Delhi Leaders’: Hardik Patel Quits Party

However, his decision to join the BJP came as a surprise, given he and his family had been associated with the Congress for many decades. His father Balram Jakhar, a staunch Gandhi family loyalist, was the longest-serving speaker in the Lok Sabha till date, and served as a Union minister in the Narasimha Rao government. Even at the worst of times, the Jakhar family never left the Congress. 

With Sunil Jakhar joining the BJP, the primary ideological rival of the Congress, the churning within the Congress is starkly visible. Jakhar, as the PCC president of Punjab, was known as a backend manager for the party. Even as many Congressmen in Punjab rebelled from time to time, Jakhar was the one to keep the Congress unit of the state in order. His loss will definitely hurt the Congress – probably more than it can perceive now. 

With Jakhar in the party, the BJP has scored a reputed Hindu face in the Sikh-majority state. His knowledge of the contours of state politics will help the saffron party in building its organisation. Until now, the saffron party had been mostly dependent on the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal), and lately former Congress chief minister Amarinder Singh. However, Jakhar, with nothing else to lose apart from his own political career, could prove to be a wilier strategist for the BJP than all its previous allies. 

Political observers will agree that the Congress leadership should have made efforts to keep an experienced Jakhar, who has had a clean record and enjoys the image of an incorruptible leader, in its stable. However, it chose to send disciplinary notices to the senior leader, which seemed to eventually prod Jakhar to switch over to the BJP. Dissent is not new in the Punjab unit of the Congress, but none of the previous rebels were given the treatment that Jakhar has had to face in the recent months. With Navjot Singh Sidhu behind bars for a year, and Channi having lost his credibility after the electoral defeat, the Punjab Congress is practically leaderless at present. 

Similarly, Hardik Patel had given a boost to Congress’s electoral prospects in Gujarat. In the run-up to 2017 assembly elections, Patel mobilised a large section of the Patidar community, which had been loyal to the BJP since the 1980s. He led a movement to seek reservation for the Patidars, while also demanding a better public education system in the state. He, along with Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani, became the opposition faces that benefited the Congress greatly. In 2017, Congress had scored its best with 77 seats, while the BJP was at its lowest with 99 seats. The trio of Patel, Thakore and Mevani was considered by many observers as the reason why the Congress could contain the BJP in the double digits. 

Also read: Congress’s Chintan Shivir Was a Step in the Right Direction

Not that Patel was not adequately rewarded. The Congress created the position of working president to accommodate Patel, despite the fact that his elevation did not go down well with many Congress old-timers. With multiple cases against him, Patel could not contest a single election. However, since most of those charges have been cleared now, the upcoming elections would have been the first time when Patel could have contested on a Congress ticket. His resignation will be a missed opportunity for the Congress. 

If his resignation letter is anything to go by, Patel is most likely to join the BJP. Sources in the saffron party also confirm this possibility. The 28-year-old Patidar leader’s resignation letter, while lampooning the Congress leadership for its alleged indecisiveness, appeared to support some of the Narendra Modi government’s key decisions such as the dilution of Article 370 and the promulgation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. He also seemed to take a sudden liking to Hindu nationalist campaigns on the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya and the proposed National Register of Indian Citizens.

Patel’s resignation is not surprising. Ever since the Congress had been wanting to induct the influential Patidar community leader Naresh Patel, Hardik Patel has been insecure. Naresh is a Patidar community leader who every party has reached out to, but it is said that he is inclined towards the Congress. While Naresh comes from the Leuva Patel community, Hardik belongs to the rival Kadva Patel community. 

What is surprising, however, is Hardik Patel’s timing. The BJP has already contained much of the Patidar anger in the state. By appointing Bhupendra Patel, a Patidar leader with a clean slate, as the chief minister, the saffron party appears to placate much of the rebellion among influential groups among Patidars. Thus, if Hardik Patel joins the BJP, he may not receive the importance that he was given in the Congress. 

As far as optics of the state politics is concerned, the BJP has now neutralised what was once seen as the opposition trio. Alpesh Thakore, soon after getting elected as a Congress MLA, joined the BJP. The saffron party has also begun to attack Mevani in an unprecedented manner. With Hardik Patel’s resignation, the trio lies more or less broken. 

The developments in the Congress have given yet another opportunity for critics to attack the party leadership. The BJP, on the other hand, has successfully diverted attention away from the Congress’s Chintan Shivir, which had created a positive air around the party. Thus, one can see election strategist Prashant Kishor, who was until recently in talks with the Congress, predicting an “impending rout” for the Congress in the upcoming assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. At the same time, political observers have upped their ante against the Gandhi family’s leadership once again. 

Unless and until the leadership of the Congress takes full control of the party, or makes way for someone else to take over, the crisis in the Congress will not die. Despite interim president Sonia Gandhi’s appeal to all leaders to speak in one voice and reach out to Indian people, the rebellion in the party will continue. The now-frequent exodus of influential leaders from the party is only a symptom of a disease that now seems to have become cancerous.

‘Gujarat Congress Busy Ensuring Timely Chicken Sandwich for Delhi Leaders’: Hardik Patel Quits Party

Adding fuel to rumours that he is likely to join BJP, Patel also accused Congress of opposing “whatever the government of India led by Narendra Modi did”. 

New Delhi: Gujarat Patidar quota agitation spearhead Hardik Patel on Wednesday said he has resigned as the Gujarat Congress working president as well as from the party’s primary membership.

The decision comes before the Gujarat assembly elections, later this year.

Patel submitted his resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The letter, tweeted by him, is fiercely critical of the Congress, which recently completed a three-day brainstorming session in Rajasthan to revive the party.

“Today, after mustering courage, I am resigning from the party post and primary membership of the Congress. I hope my followers and people of Gujarat will welcome my step. I believe that I will be able to serve the state better after this step,” he tweeted.

In the letter, Patel claims that Congress leaders had lost grassroots connect and were more intent upon ensuring timely “chicken sandwich for leaders who have come from Delhi.”

“Senior leaders behave in a way like they hate Gujarat and Gujaratis,” Patel also said.

Adding fuel to rumours that he is likely to join Bharatiya Janata Party, Patel also accused Congress of opposing “whatever the government of India led by Narendra Modi did”.

With Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani and former Radhanpur MLA Alpesh Thakore, Patel had formed a trio of young leaders who had emerged BJP’s main challengers in Gujarat. Thakore had left Congress and joined the saffron party in 2019. Mevani, an independent who supports Congress, has recently been charged in a number of cases, one of which a court expressly labelled as “false”.

Patel had been one of the working presidents of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee. The 2022 Gujarat assembly polls are likely to be the first elections which he can contest. Charged in various cases related to the Patidar quota agitation, he had not been able to contest either the last assembly and 2019 parliamentary polls. He has since been cleared of all charges.

Patel had recently been critical of the Congress and in late April, dropped the party’s name from his Twitter description.

Gujarat: Prashant Kishor’s Plan for Congress Hinges on Naresh and Hardik Patel

Even as speculation is rife that the poll strategist may join the grand old party ahead of the 2024 general election, the immediate focus appears to be the assembly election in Gujarat.

Even as it appears imminent that political strategist Prashant Kishor is expected to associate with the Congress party as a key planner for the Gujarat polls, it is public knowledge that he wishes powerful Leuva Patel leader Naresh Patel to play a major role, while ensuring that the young Hardik Patel, a Kadva Patidar, remains integral to the system.

Speculations are also rife that Prashant Kishor may even join the Congress party ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Three meetings took place between national Congress leaders with Naresh Patel, who heads the Khodaldham Temple Trust. The Leuva Patel leader has considerable influence in his sub-sect in the politically significant Saurashtra region.

Nares Patel’s first meeting on Friday was with the national general secretary and a close Gandhi family aide K.C. Venugopal, before a separate meeting with Kishor. This was followed by another conference with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Kishor and Venugopal. A final call would be taken once Rahul Gandhi returns from abroad around May 15.

According to reliable AICC sources in Delhi, the key point that Kishor and Naresh Patel insisted on at the meetings was that it was crucial not to let Hardik Patel leave the party in view of the recent noises he has made about being given short shrift in the party, while simultaneously praising the BJP leadership. Hardik’s Patidar agitation played a stellar role during the run-up to the December 2015 civic bodies elections as well as the 2017 assembly polls when the Congress gave its best performance in three decades.

After returning to Rajkot from Delhi, Naresh Patel, who had all along kept his cards close to his chest as to which party he would eventually join, told reporters at the Rajkot airport, “I had met Prasant Kishor. I will announce my decision by May 15.” That is when Rahul Gandhi returns from abroad and the Congress leadership would have one final meeting with Naresh Patel.

Both the warring sects of the Patidars — the Leuvas and Kadvas — are estimated to constitute around 1.5 crore people of Gujarat’s 6.5 crore population. Patidars or Patels claim to be the descendants of Lord Ram; the Leuvas and Kadvas claim to have descended from Ram’s twin sons, Luv and Kush respectively. The Leuvas worship Khodal Ma as their clan deity, while the Kadvas worship Umiya Mata.

Even the Gujarat Congress sources reveal to Vibes of India that the anti-BJP tone the agitation gave birth to is still alive.

“We need Patidars to fight and win the elections against BJP, especially the Leuvas and Kadvas who constitute around 15 per cent of the state’s electorate,” a newly appointed AICC state in-charge secretary of Gujarat Congress said.

In Central, North and South Gujarat, the BJP had maintained its presence with a total of 76 seats in the 2017 elections.

A senior Indian-Political Action Committee (I-PAC) member told VOI that it’s evident that Patidars have a strong influence on around 50 seats in Gujarat, the majority of which are in the Saurashtra region.

“If Congress can give the right electoral candidature to Naresh Patel and keep a hold on Hardik Patel, then the chances are higher that the other Patidar community organisations such as Umiyadham Sidsar in Saurashtra; Umiyadham and in North Gujarat; Vishva Umiya Foundation and Sardardham in Central Gujarat; Surat-based Samast Patidar Samaj in South Gujarat and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) will align as pro-Congress”.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also trying hard to fish in the troubled waters by keeping its door wide to welcome influential leaders.

Notably, in the recent 2021 Surat Municipal Elections, AAP has won 8 seats out of 27 in Patidar-dominated areas where quota agitation led by the community leaders in 2015 had taken place. The Patidars had supported the Congress after 2015 but preferred the AAP over the grand-old-party this time around.

“Patidar community leaders had proposed a specific number of tickets in the Surat civic polls which the Congress had denied. Then the AAP won 27 seats with a vote share of 28.58 per cent, while the Congress which did not win a single seat saw its vote share go down by 9.23 per cent”, the I-PAC source told VOI.

This article was first published on Vibes of India.

Central Leadership Gets a Bad Rap, But the Roots of Congress’s Problems Lie in States

While conversation has been focused on the Gandhis resigning, recent happenings across the party’s state units point to the root of the problem.

New Delhi: The Congress’s troubles in keeping its house in order just don’t seem to go away.

The central leadership in the last Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting decided to hold a “Chintan Shivir” soon and reassured its members of an election to choose its new president by August, in a clear attempt to placate the so-called G-23 group of dissenters. However, the recent crises for the party in states like Jharkhand and Maharashtra signal that the roots of Congress’s problems may lie elsewhere – in the states. 

Congress’s current leaderships in states have failed in containing multiple layers of dissatisfaction and resentment, even as its tried-and-tested organisational framework designed to be democratic has been ineffective in building the party at the grassroots. In the recent past, the party has heavily depended upon a few leaders who have managed to retain their positions and stature in the organisation. They have, however, miserably failed in doing the tasks expected of them. 

In the process, the party has been reduced to fiefdoms of the PCC chiefs, who may have access to the central leadership but are no more than paperweights as far as their influence among the electorate is concerned. 

Having faced a series of defeats over the last seven years, it has lost many of its leaders and cadres to the BJP. Resultantly, enthusiasm among cadres is at its lowest ever, even as there has been no attempt on the part of states’ leadership to energise the party. The state leadership, barring a few exceptions like Karnataka’s D.K. Shivakumar or Telangana’s A. Revanth Reddy or to an extent Gujarat’s Jagdish Thakore, have largely ignored this fundamental problem of the Congress either out of sheer complacency or factional political practice. 

Also read: The Congress Is Doomed Unless It Moves Away From the ‘Three of Us’

Infighting in the party is only bound to grow in such a situation, where each leader is looking to secure her own interests rather than those of the party. Even as dissenters and political observers seek a change in Congress’s central leadership, they have missed this crucial point. One may ask whether a new president can guarantee a complete revamping of the party, which has so far only drowned itself further in patronage politics. What is the likelihood that the new leadership doesn’t end up promoting yet another hue of factional politics? 

In such a state of affairs, the debate on whether the Gandhis should go or not sounds immaterial.

State units in disarray

Recent developments in most states, be it in those where it is in the opposition or those where it is in power or have a share in power, point towards an existential crisis for the party. To be sure, this plight is not solely because of the defeats it has had to face in recent times. 

Let us look at a few instances where the state leadership only made a mess out of the party’s prospects. Punjab is the first state that comes to mind, where animosity between PCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and other top leaders of the party, including its chief ministerial candidate Charanjit Singh Channi, was so loud that voters almost felt compelled to distance themselves from the Congress. 

Navjot Singh Sidhu and Charanjit Singh Channi. In the background are Congress supporters holding aloft the party flag. Photos: Twitter and File. Illustration: The Wire

Ever since the grand-old party secured a thumping majority in Chhattisgarh, factions led by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and state health minister T.S. Singhdeo haven’t missed a chance to take a swipe at each other. As a result, the infighting has brought greater attention to the Congress than Baghel’s own achievements as the chief minister.

Over the last two years, there were many incidents in which Singhdeo-supporting MLAs camped in Delhi to assert their weight against the chief minister. Mohan Markam, as the PCC president, hasn’t shown any inclination to step up and quell the discord in the party, and is probably content with his position as the chief of a party that is in power. 

Also read: ‘Out With the Gandhis’ a Cry of Despair; With No Obvious Replacement, Cure May Be Worse than Disease

D.K. Shivakumar, as the PCC president of Karnataka, has emerged as a fighter and has taken on the ruling BJP on practically every issue by mobilising party members on the streets. And so has former chief minister Siddaramaiah. However, no one in the central leadership has addressed the elephant in the room, which is the constant power tussle between the two top leaders in the state. 

Similarly, the appointment of Jagdish Thakore, known for his agitational approach to politics, as the Gujarat Congress chief was received with great enthusiasm among party members. However, it is also fairly known that he has failed to get the support of a large section of state Congress leaders, who would any day be happier in taking him down than considering the party’s prospects in the upcoming assembly elections.

In Maharashtra, Nana Patole’s appointment as the PCC chief was seen as a temporary arrangement to have a consensus candidate at the top – a political move to appease different factions of the state Congress instead of actually handing over the state leadership. How is it surprising, then, that 22 of the 44 Congress MLAs in the state flew down to Delhi to complain against their party ministers? Most of the dissenters have said that the Congress legislators have been getting “secondary treatment” by coalition partners Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party. They also accused the Congress ministers in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of “non-cooperation”. 

A similar episode has been unfolding in Jharkhand too. More than half of the 16 Congress MLAs in the Hemant Soren-led government have openly rebelled against the four Congress ministers. They have quoted Rahul Gandhi’s “one leader, one position” formula to dissent against PCC chief Rameshwar Oraon, who is also a minister in Soren’s cabinet.

Some observers say that most of these dissenters are young and ambitious and want a share in power. The rebels have made their intentions as clear as possible by demanding that each minister should have a tenure of only 2.5 years to accommodate other MLAs. Oraon, on the other hand, has chosen to be tight-lipped about the crisis under his leadership. Avinash Pande, who was appointed as the general-secretary in-charge for the state after the exit of R.P.N. Singh to the BJP, has been struggling to contain the resentment within the party. 

Similar uninspiring appointments have also been made in most other states, where the central leadership had to contend between choosing a charismatic and dedicated leader or strike a middle ground to placate all factions in the party by appointing a consensus candidate. 

Most PCC presidents in the recent past, except Navjot Singh Sidhu, are dyed-in-the-wool Congressmen. However, they have lost their ability to inspire party ranks as well as the electorate. Moreover, most of them have failed to understand the system of BJP’s political dominance, both ideologically and organisationally. Neither have they focussed on increasing the party’s reach in the hinterland, nor have shown any inclination to lead from the front. 

The latest implosion in Jharkhand and Maharashtra points to an overall lack of coordination between the party’s central and state leaderships. Following the disastrous performance in the recently-concluded assembly elections, Sonia Gandhi appears to have taken matters in her own hands in what seems like an intention to correct the course. She has PCC chiefs in all the five states that went to the polls. She has given ample indications that the final authority rests with her in what seemed to be a strong message to state units and leaders who have attempted to question her role. She has also been having back-to-back meetings with Congress MPs and exhorted leaders to speak in one voice and come across as a united force. 

However, her appeal until now, as incidents in at least two states where it has a share in power, appears to have been paid no heed.

Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar To Join Congress on September 28

The development comes ahead of next year’s assembly polls in BJP-ruled Gujarat. Gujarat Congress working president Hardik Patel said all youth willing to work to ‘strengthen Gandhi and Nehru’s ideals’ are welcome in the party.

Ahmedabad: Jignesh Mevani, an independent Gujarat MLA and influential Dalit leader, announced on Saturday that he would join Congress on September 28 along with former JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

The development comes ahead of the next year’s assembly elections in the BJP-ruled Gujarat. Mevani had won election from the Vadgam assembly constituency in Banaskantha district in 2017 with the backing of Congress. “On September 28, I will be joining the Indian National Congress along with Kanhaiya Kumar,” he told PTI, adding that he will be able to talk in detail about the decision only after that.

Working president of Gujarat Congress Hardik Patel will also attend the function in Delhi where he will be inducted in the party in the presence of Rahul Gandhi, Mevani said.

“We welcome all the revolutionary youths who are willing to work for the development of the country and strengthen the Congress party and the ideals of (Mahatma) Gandhi, Sardar (Patel) and (Jawaharlal) Nehru,” Hardik Patel said in a statement.

He described Mevani as “an old friend” and said his entry will help the party both in the state and at the national level.

Chief spokesperson of Gujarat Congress Manish Doshi said Mevani became an MLA with the support of Congress workers in the 2017 elections, and his entry “will strengthen the party’s fight against the corrupt policies of the BJP”. “Congress party welcomes everyone who fights against the corrupt policies of the BJP. The party policy is to ensure justice to everyone in Gujarat and fight against every such policy of the BJP which is anti-people, anti-youth, anti-farmer, anti-poor,” Doshi said.