After announcing on August 30 in Jamnagar that he would be visiting his native Gujarat more frequently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will celebrate his birthday on September 17 with the tribals of the state, while BJP President Amit Shah braces to face the angry Patel community in Surat on Thursday, about a month after the ‘replacement’ of veteran Anandiben Patel with the greenhorn incumbent Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.
The irate Dalit community, who constitute 7-8 per cent of the state’s population, are not amused, however: under the banner of the Dalit Hitrakshak Sangh, they are organising a ‘Dalit Ekta Sammelan’ in Ahmedabad on Saturday.
On Thursday, Shah will also address a party
Modi, who will turn 66 on September 17, will, as in the past, seek his mother Hiraba’s blessings here, before meeting the tribals and addressing a public meeting in Navsari district of South Gujarat. This will be his third visit to Gujarat within 20 days, the second being when he came to Sarangpur last week to pay respects to the late Pramukh Swami Maharaj of the Swaminarayan sect, with which a large number of Patels are associated. In November, he is likely to inaugurate the World Kabaddi Championship in Maninagar, Ahmedabad, which used to be his Assembly constituency. Again, in January, he is expected to inaugurate the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investment Summit, 2017.
The BJP seem to be bracing for early Assembly elections in the state, actually scheduled for end-2017. Congress veteran, Ahmed Patel, secretary to party chief Sonia Gandhi, has already hinted at this.
Ahead of the possible Gujarat Vidhan Sabha elections along with Uttar Pradesh and Punjab in early-2017, and amid reports of the BJP trying to split the Hardik Patel led-Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), the ruling party is organising a massive show of strength on Thursday in Surat, the epicentre of the Patel temblor, to ensure that its prosperous and influential Patel support base was still agile and intact. All the Patel leaders of the BJP — MPs, MLAs, ministers, party office-bearers, etc—have been roped into make the “Patidar Abhivadan Samaroh” a success. The Patels constitute about 15 per cent of the voters.
It is, however, not known why the BJP is going to ‘honour’ the rebel Patels, who bore the brunt of the state government and its police in August 2015 when Hardik gathered a million-strong crowd in Ahmedabad to demand reservation for his community in government jobs and educational institutions on a par with the OBCs.
The Alpesh Thakore-led OBCs, suspecting that the BJP and its government could slice off the reservation pie in favour of the Patels at the cost of the OBCs, have also been up in arms for months. The OBCs, who at 40-plus per cent of the Gujarati population are the largest group of voters, also launched “reform” such as liquor prohibition in their communities.
But this is no reason for the Congress to rejoice: its own former MP from Patan, Jagadish Thakore, resigned from party posts on Tuesday, charging the party leadership on various counts.