Bharuch youth wing rejects Cong choice

BHARUCH, Aug 23: She Congress's decision to field a defector for the Bharuch Lok Sabha seat has not gone down well with party cadres. Ama...

BHARUCH, Aug 23: She Congress’s decision to field a defector for the Bharuch Lok Sabha seat has not gone down well with party cadres. Amarsinh Vasava, a close aide of the Janata Dal’s Chhotubhai Vasava, switched to the Congress recently, and landed himself the ticket.

Party sources say the youth wing has distanced itself from the campaign, feeling that the seat had been handed to the BJP on a platter, and expressed its displeasure to GPCC president C D Patel and senior leaders Ahmed Patel and Amarsinh Chaudhary.

While admitting that bitterness had crept in among the party cadre, senior leader and Vaghra MLA Iqbal Patel, however, maintains, “The crisis has been defused, since the party has been able to convince the youth wing that the decision will benefit the Congress in the long run.”

Bharuch Congress youth wing president Yogesh Patel, however, minces no words in denouncing the decision. “It is clearly wrong. (Vasava) switched loyalties and was given the ticket bypassing senior and committed district-level leaders. It has demoralised the rank and file of the party here”, he told Express Newsline.

Though Iqbal Patel attributes Amarsinh’s selection to his Adivasi background, many party leaders are not convinced. “We used to get about 40,000 votes from the Adivasi segments of Dedia Pada, Sagbara and Valia anyway. We needed to focus on BJP strongholds like Jambusar, Ankleshwar, Hansot and Bharuch”, the youth wing chief says.

Moreover, he says, the non-Muslim candidate could alienate the 20 per cent Muslim voters in the constituency. In the last Lok Sabha elections, party candidate Iqbal Kakujee had bagged an impressive 2.11 lakh votes, including the entire Muslim vote.

Iqbal Patel, however, says that if the Congress put up a Muslim candidate, the BJP could have communalised the electioneering. “Last time they raked up the communal issue and managed to consolidate their committed vote bank on communal lines”, he points out.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party, which holds the seat, has been quick to spot the disillusionment among the Congress workers. “By choosing a dal badlu candidate, they’ve demoralised their own cadre”, exults district BJP chief Jayanti Patel. “They’ve given the seat to us on a platter. If they’d put up a loyalist Congressman, we’d could have faced problems.”

Congress sources say the district party leaders had initially floated the idea of nominating Motilal Vasava, an Adivasi, but the idea was rejected by the party central leadership. And for all this, district party leaders blame the “tussle” between Amarsinh Chaudhary and Ahmed Patel which, they allege, had placed the district units on the threshold of disintegration.