New Delhi, Oct 29: The Congress may hope to upset the BJP in Gujarat with a rainbow coalition of different castes, but the saffron party believes that the move will backfire and end up boosting its prospects.
BJP leaders, who are part of their party’s Gujarat Assembly poll campaign, said the Congress’s strategy to bring OBCs and Patidars, two groups accounting for more than half of the state’s voters, under its banner is full of contradictions as the two communities have competing interests and ambitions.
Patidar leader Hardik Patel’s warning to the Congress to commit itself to his community’s quota demand by November 3 or face dire consequences is being seen by the BJP as a clear sign of these contradictions. Reaching out to the OBC, the Congress had recently inducted Alpesh Thakor, who has rallied the community against the demand for including Patidars in the existing OBC quota.
While the opposition party has also tried to win over Patel but Thakor has insisted that the OBC quota cannot be tinkered with. The BJP, which has remained undefeated in the state Assembly polls since 1995, has relied on the consolidation of voters around its plank of Hindutva and ‘vikas’ (development), maintaining a lead of close to 10 per cent over the Congress in vote share.
Patidars have been the lynchpin of the BJP’s support and its leaders, who did not wish to be named, insisted that a majority of them will continue to back it despite a sense of unrest among a section of the community against the party. They played down Patel’s electoral significance, noting that a leader of the stature of former chief minister Keshubhai Patel could notch up less than four per cent of votes when his Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) fought against the BJP in the 2012 elections. The GPP had won only two seats and it later merged with the BJP.
However, some political watchers believe that Hardik Patel’s campaign against the BJP has struck a chord in the community as the quota issue raised by him has more resonance than Keshubhai’s fight which was confined to opposing the then chief minister Narendra Modi, now the Prime Minister. (PTI)
