Gujarat exits bleed Cong, it says there is a silver lining: new blood

While the Congress has been struggling in Gujarat since the 2017 Assembly elections, when for a brief while a victory did not seem impossible, February was among the bad months. Between February 17 and 27, senior leaders such as former spokesperson Jayrajsinh Parmar, two-time former MLA from Lunawada Hirabhai Patel, former Mehsana Congress president Rajendrasinh Darbar and former leader of the opposition in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Dinesh Sharma, left the party for the BJP.

The BJP, whose chief C R Paatil had once dismissed Congress turncoats as inconsequential in the party’s plans, put up posters at crossroads in Ahmedabad welcoming Sharma into the fold. The BJP also recently inducted six corporators of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had packed a surprise by picking up seats in the February 2021 local polls, along with the AIMIM, despite the two parties having barely any organisational base in Gujarat.

Rahul Gandhi’s remarks indicated that the Congress realises this vote as a yearning for change in Gujarat – which has now had a BJP government since 1995. He told partymen in his speech that there was an “opportunity” for the party, and people in Gujarat were looking at the Congress, but that they were unclear about “what the Congress wants to do, how it wants to go about it and who are the people driving it to achieve those goals”.

To some, the exits seem one more run on the beleaguered party. However, Congress sources said, the value of these leaders to the BJP is more optics than anything else. Unlike the losses ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections in 2017, when Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela and at least 13 other MLAs had quit, or when ex-MP Sagar Rayka joined the BJP, the 10 who left recently are lightweight.

Some Congressmen even argue that the space created by the exits is likely to allow more room for the new leadership to rise. In his address at the Chintan Shibir, Raghu Sharma said the party needs to “change the way it fights elections”. Calling for “new blood”, he said someone trying to stop them” would be ”wrong”.

That was also a signal to the old guard, at a time when several high-profile leaders inducted into the Congress on Gandhi’s intervention are waiting in the wings. They include Hardik Patel, who led the Patidar agitation of 2015, and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani.

The old guard has been openly chafing at the importance given to Patel and Mevani by Gandhi. On October 22 last year, Gandhi had tried to tackle this by inviting 23 senior leaders from the Gujarat Congress to Delhi, including Mevani, for one-on-one discussions on the issues they faced within the party.

In December last year, the Congress did the balancing act by appointing two veterans to top posts — OBC leader Jagdish Thakor as Gujarat Congress president and tribal leader Sukhram Rathva as Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly – replacing young leaders Amit Chavda and Paresh Dhanani.

“What Rahul Gandhi said at the Chintan Shibir was with extreme clarity. He wants such people in the Congress to come up who work for the party. A clear message has also been sent to senior leaders that he stands shoulder to shoulder with all the hardworking party workers,” said Manish Doshi, spokesperson, Gujarat Congress.

On the Kaurava jibe, Doshi said: “Rahul spoke in the context of war between dharma and adharma, satya and asatya in Mahabharata. He spoke about the people who want to fight for the Congress, saying they should be given priority, instead of those who don’t wish to put up a fight. His message was that if you wish to stay in the party, you have to fight together.”

Congress leaders hope that this reinvention, even if it is just baby steps right now, will keep AAP out of Gujarat. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party is targeting states where the BJP and Congress have been traditionally in a dual race, and any gains by it could mean further erosion of the Congress in the state.

Party sources said “fragmentation of votes” by parties like the AAP and AIMIM was “neither good for the Congress nor the BJP”. “Gujarat has always been a battle between the BJP and Congress, there is no room for a third force,” a leader insisted.