New entrants may not really water Cong’s greenshoots

This election season in Gujarat, like all others, has seen fresh faces being inducted into rival parties BJP and Congress. Predictably, this has led to rumblings within and battles for poll tickets as elections to the State Assembly draws nearer. The two major parties are now finding it difficult to douse the domestic fires and keep their flock together.

It is the Congress that is facing a major insurgency. Political green-shoots had only begun to show for the party that has been out of power in Gujarat for 22 years, when it is faced with problems of candidate selection.

The party had begun to empanel probable candidates since June and had, for many seats, even finalised its nominees. In August, with Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebellion, and the subsequent exit of 14 of its 57 MLAs, the party had to reshuffle the list. Now, with Thakore Sena leader Alpesh Thakore entry, and the possible induction of Dalit icon Jignesh Mevani and Patidar leader Hardik Patel, the list is set for another rejig!

Only recently did the State Congress leaders realise that the entry of Thakore and others had come at a cost: the youngsters are, reportedly, joining the Congress with a list of their own candidates to be fielded on the party’s tickets, thus upsetting the leadership’s apple-cart. It is yet unclear how many seats the Thakore Sena and the OBC-SC-ST Ekta Manch, led by Alpesh, will be allotted by Gujarat Congress. However, sources claimed Hardik has asked the Congress leadership for around 50 tickets — the Gujarat Assembly has a strength of 182 — as the cost of Patidar support to the Grand Old Party, something the Congress finds impossible to promise.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will tour the State in the first week of November, when the Hardik group is expected to take a final call on its likely alliance with the party. Despite CCTV footage going viral, Hardik denied having met Rahul at a hotel here this week.

Due to these changed equations, the Congress has deferred the announcement of its first list of candidates which could have triggered a wave of internal dissidence, washing away its recent gains. In fact, a section of Congress leaders are angry at the last-minute induction of supporters of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) and Thakore Sena. The Congress is expected to withhold its list of candidates till the last date of filing of nominations, as it usually does in different States, if only to minimise damage due to internal sabotage.

At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is planning as many as 50 meetings across Gujarat and BJP President Amit Shah is tying up loose ends — he, in fact, visited a famous bhajia shop in Raipur area of Ahmedabad’s Old City at midnight on Thursday, in an attempted image makeover — — the Gujarat party unit has been flooded with over 4,500 “applications” from potential candidates. The Modi-Shah duo will select BJP candidates next month.

The BJP may also have to field some rebel Congress MLAs who joined it a couple of months ago. Already, the Vijay Rupani government has accomodated Balwantsinh Rajput — the former Chief Whip of the Congress and a relative of Shankersinh Vaghela — who unsuccessfully contested against Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha election in August. Rajput is now the Chairman of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC).

But, unlike the Congress, the cadre-based, RSS-backed BJP is unlikely to face much intra-party sabotage. It deals with such saboteurs sternly and renders them persona non grata forever. Little wonder then that it did not re-induct Vaghela!