NEW DELHI: Gujarat Congress working president Hardik Patel resigned from the grand old party on Wednesday. There are speculations that Patel may join the BJP in the coming days like Punjab leader Sunil Jakhar who quit the Congress and joined the saffron party. Whether or not Patel joins the BJP, his exit from the Congress is likely to help the ruling party in Gujarat.
Patels or Patidars constitute about 14 per cent of the population in Gujarat. Majority of the Patels are believed to be supporters of BJP since 1995 after they felt ignored by the then Congress chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki who devised the social engineering formula of Kham - Kshatriyas, Harijans (now called Dalits), Adivasis (tribal population) and Muslims in 1985.
The Patels shifted their loyalty away from Congress to BJP helping the latter to form government led by Keshubhai Patel in 1995. Barring a few months, BJP has been governing the coastal state bordering Pakistan since then.
However, BJP faced a tough challenge in the 2017 assembly election when Hardik Patel led a movement called Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) in 2015 demanding reservation for Patidars-Patels in government jobs and higher educational institutions. Hardik Patel, who was 22 years old then, became a symbol of Patidar unity and youth aspiration in the state.
The movement cost BJP dear. Despite Gujarat being the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, who was the BJP president then, BJP suffered a setback. Its seats were reduced from 115 in the 2012 assembly election to 99 in the 182-member assembly. BJP managed to win just seven seats more than the majority mark of 92.
A sizeable section of the Patidar votes had shifted away from BJP.
Hardik Patel, along with two other activists - Alpesh Thakor (an OBC) and Jignesh Mevani (a Dalit) - also caught the imagination of the youths across several sections of the society. Together they weaned away a considerable number of votes of the youths.
Thakor contested the 2017 assembly election on a Congress ticket from Radhanpur constituency and won. He quit the party and joined BJP in April 2019. He contested the byelection from the same constituency but lost.
Mevani contested the previous assembly election as an independent candidate from Vadgam reserved constituency for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and won. He has announced that he would join Congress ahead of the Gujarat assembly election likely to be held later this year.
As far as Hardik Patel is concerned, he backed Congress in the 2017 assembly election. He could not contest because he was not 25 years of age. He joined the party in March 2019, ahead of the last Lok Sabha election. He was immediately anointed as state working president of Congress.
However, peeved over not being elevated to the full-time state president of Congress, he quit the party on Wednesday. His resignation is likely to help the BJP as he was a vociferous critic of the governing party. Even if joins Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) or remains independent, he is likely to eat into the anti-BJP votes.
