Gujarat will soon be poll-bound as the Assembly election due in the state in Dec are approaching. Both the BJP and Congress have geared up ahead of the polls and are holding meetings and discussion for the election campaigns.
However, apart from the political parties few other also seem to have been active to decide the changing political equations in the state. Gujarat Patidar leader Hardik Patel has been seen actively participating in rallies and meeting openly showcasing its distress against the ruling BJP government under the leadership of Vijay Rupai.
Recently while addressing the gathering during his three-day Sankalp Yatra which began on Thursday in Ahmedabad, he requested the Patidars not to vote for the BJP candidates in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections. He said that the ruling BJP has been exploiting the Patidars for their use but have done nothing for their favor.
Citing the incident of Godhara riots in 2002, Patel said that even after so many years of the riots, 150 Patidars are serving life imprisonment even today. He said that his community has only been slaves of the BJP for 25 years and the party had only exploited them for their use. It is time to liberate the community he added.
Attacking the BJP Hardik warned the people that now that the assembly elections were approaching near the BJP would give luring bribes and lollipops to vote for them but he stressed and requested not to vote for them. “Don’t vote even for my father, Bharat Patel, if he fights the election from Keshod as a BJP candidate,” he said.
He also accused the state government of threatening to file cases against the Patidar leader. Though he has time and again said that the Patidars were ready to fight the BJP in any way they want be it legally or by gundagardi (hooliganism).
Further addressing the gathering Hardik Patel also invited other communist parties to join the movement against BJP and pull them down from the throne. He said that “let us, we Patidars and other communities, get together and remove those who are behaving like dictators and goons.”
Hardik Patel during his address also defended the Congress saying that the party had at least not killed anybody, unlike the BJP. Talking about the incident of 1985 he said that the Congress had only threatened to force the upper caste women to wait in queues to get oil, whereas the BJP had killed 14 boys. Patel said that the BJP does not deserve to come back to power for the next 50 years.
During his speech, he also criticised the MLAs who had ditched the Congress and quit the party to join BJP and vote against the party during the recent Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections.
Meanwhile, BJP has now become aware of the rapidly growing influence of Hardik Patel and rising feeling of anti-incumbency in the state. In order to tackle the situation which is slipping out of the hands of BJP, the party has planned to host a number of rallies and yatras in the state. BJP party president Amit Shah will be addressing a rally of backward castes on Sep 18. BJP will also 2yatras which will be 15 days long concluding on 15 Oct.