The victory of Congress candidate Ahmed Patel over BJP candidate Balwant Singh Rajput has spoken many words and added the scope for many more pages to be written in the book of the battle of power between Congress and BJP.
The victory of Ahmed Patel was extremely crucial for the party as this was the last hope it could hold on to and keep the faith of its workers alive in the party and amongst the people. Had Ahmed lost the polls it could have been a major blow and may be the beginning of the demolition of Congress from Gujarat. But the tables turned in favour of Congres when objections were raised against two MLAs who had violated the voting rules by displaying their votes in front of BJP.
The matter was reported to the election commission and after much-heated debate put forth by both the parties EC disqualified the 2 votes bringing down the magical number to 44 and marking the victory of Ahmed Patel.
However, the decision of the EC came as a hard hit realisation for BJP and responding to which the party has now decided to go to the court seeking justice. In his statement to ET Gujarat BJP Spokesperson Bharat Pandya told “that the party will now fight the legal battle over the disqualification of two crucial votes of Congress MLAs Raghavji Patel and Bholabhai Gohil, which brought down the magic number to 44 from earlier 45 and made Congress candidate Ahmed Patel’s win possible.”
BJP had made every possible effort to bring down the number of votes in favour of Patel but the results turned out the other way further infuriating the already agitated BJP. Interestingly BJP too had made similar complaints about two Congress MLAs, Shailesh Parmar and Mitesh Garasia, which were not entertained by the Commission. Had the commission also accepted the complaints of BJP the results would be in favour of BJP.
As it is said nothing is predictable and permanent in politics the game for the third Rajya Sabha seat stills does not seem to be over with now BJP playing the next move of going to court over the EC verdict of disqualification of two votes.