Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections witnessed a tremendous battle between BJP–Congress. Usually, the Rajya Sabha elections are always handled peacefully and most of the time MPs are elected uncontested but this time there was lots of drama.
Against Ahmed Patel the Chanakya of Congress, BJP had fielded Balwant Singh Rajput a rebel congressman and a trustworthy of Patel. The rebellion of veteran Congressman Shankersinh Vaghela and the continuous resignation of Congress legislators had weakened Patel’s candidature. Despite the cross voting of 14 Congress MLAs, Ahmed Patel succeeded in winning the elections by the margin of half votes and was elected for the fifth time in a row as the member of the Rajya Sabha. Thursday morning Gujarat Congress taking strict action against the rebel legislators expelled 14 MLAs from the party on the grounds of violating the party whip and they are all expelled for the next 6 years.
The expelled legislators include veteran leader Shankersinh Vaghela, his son Mahendra Singh Vaghela, Raghavji Patel, Bholabhai Gohil, Hukum Jadeja, Anand Chaudhary, C.K. Raulji, Kamasi Makwana, Karamshi Patel and Dharmendra Singh Jadeja.
All 43 Congress MLAs along with, former Rajasthan CM and current party in charge of Gujarat Congress Ashok Gehlot on Thursday met and congratulated Ahmed Patel for his victory. Gehlot said that Ahmed Patel’s victory is the victory of party unity in Gujarat. With the help of Ahmed Patel, all the MLAs have given an introduction to mutual solidarity and have hit the BJP’s mouth on the pitch. He further added that it was necessary to take strict vigilance on the rebel MLAs so that no such move was taken again in future.
Addressing all the MLAs during the visit, Ahmed Patel thanked them all and said that from now on they should rigorously start preparing for the assembly elections due later this year. He claimed that the next government in Gujarat will be Congress, and in 2019 Rahul Gandhi will defeat Modi. Patel further told the MLAs to enter the field with the full determination of achieving 125 seats in the assembly polls.