Opinion Ahmed Patel for Rajya Sabha: Much more than just a prestige battle for Gujarat Congress

It is surprising that cross-voting by Congress MLAs in the recent presidential elections, an indicator of the party’s poor intelligence network and the high command having little control over its legislators, did not prepare the party for Vaghela’s resignation and its fallouts ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections.

After a string of defections, the Congress, in fact, took a leaf out of Vaghela’s book and flew its MLAs to Bengaluru to save the precious Rajya Sabha votes for Patel. (In 1995, Vaghela had flown out nearly 55 MLAs to Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh to engineer a coup in the BJP).

Even after 20 years of cohabiting with Vaghela, the Congress underestimated him. In public, Vaghela would heap praises on Sonia Gandhi and describe Ahmed Patel as a “Sufi”. Over the years, however, he had built a coterie in the Congress that was ready to play fidayeen on his cue. At least that is how it looked when six MLAs quit the Congress last week, many of them without a plan in hand, and some were not even Vaghela loyalists.

The Congress’s count in the Gujarat assembly stands at 51, which includes some who might not vote for Patel. Patel would need 45 votes to win unless more legislators quit. Gujarat has three seats in Rajya Sabha. While BJP president Amit Shah and Union Minister Smriti Irani would easily win two seats, it is the third seat for which the BJP has pitted Balwantsinh Rajput, who is among the Congress MLAs who quit last week, against Patel turning into a contest.

Vaghela, it is said, was never comfortable in the Congress even though he was there for two decades. When his Rashtriya Janata Party merged with the Congress in 1999, purportedly as part of Ahmed Patel’s plan, many in the Congress were unhappy because of Vaghela’s RSS roots. However, Vaghela, who was used to calling the shots in the BJP, which was one of the reasons why he walked out of it, wanted to do the same in the Congress.

For him, the power that Patel commanded had become stifling. This, even when the Congress gave Vaghela enough room, appointing him Gujarat PCC chief in 2002, union minister, opposition leader and campaign convenor in the 2012 elections after he complained about the party being ill-prepared for assembly elections—an alibi he used to quit the assembly this time.

At 77, Vaghela is astute, ambitious and a fighter, and wants to ensure a political career for his son Mahendrasinh, who is rumoured to have got an offer from the BJP.

In the last two decades, however, neither Patel nor Vaghela have been able to recreate the magic of the 80s when the Congress won 149/ 182 seats in 1985 and 141 in 1980, under leaders like Madhavsinh Solanki and Amarsinh Chaudhary who had consolidated the kshatriya, dalit, tribal and muslim votes. Its victories today are owing to anti-incumbency but the party has lost the foothold in the party and among voters.

Bharuch, the constituency that Patel represented in the Lok Sabha till 1989, has gone to the BJP since – an indicator that he could not swing votes. The masses of Muslims in Gujarat don’t see Patel as their leader either because he never spoke out strongly against Modi in 2002 for fear of being labelled as a minority leader.

On the contrary, Vaghela has won from different constituencies in the state and national elections, and can still swing some Kshatriya and OBC votes.

A disgruntled Congress MLA, pleading anonymity, said, “Congress runs like a private limited company of which Ahmedbhai is the managing director, and the baton of leadership remains within the circuit of five – Bharatsinh Solanki, Siddharth Patel, Arjun Modhwadia, Shankersinh Vaghela and Shaktisinh Gohil.

This MLA seemed to be speaking for a good number of formidable Congress members who felt impeded by the coteries. Solanki, Siddharth Patel, Modhwadia and Gohil had lost in the 2012 assembly election. And in 2014, the Congress failed to win even one of the 26 Lok Sabha seats from Gujarat, and among the losers was Solanki, the current PCC chief.

At Gujarat’s doorstep is now an election without Modi at the helm, with unrest in the Patidar, Dalit and OBC communities, businesses battling GST blues, and Aadhar hiccups. Vaghela’s exit should be seen as a purgation for the Congress, to re-invent and liberate from coterie politics and emerge as a strong opposition in the state.