Leaping into the big unknown

Should the Congress candidate for the Anand seat, Bharatsinh Solanki, lose, he’ll be losing more than just a seat. For it’s a seat...

Should the Congress candidate for the Anand seat, Bharatsinh Solanki, lose, he’ll be losing more than just a seat. For it’s a seat that his maternal grandfather Ishwarsinh Chavda represented five times. His father Madhavsinh Solanki was twice elected to the Rajya Sabha.

Both have nurtured this essentially Patel constituency, expanding from their pocket borough of the Borsad-Bhadran assembly constituencies, which are dominated by their community of Kshatriyas and OBCs. The expansion has meant gaining influence in the Patel-dominated Anand, Sarsa, and Sojitra assembly constituencies. Both Chavda and Madhavsinh Solanki have managed this well.

For Solanki Jr, who has represented the Borsad assembly constituency three times, this election becomes an important test: will he make the jump from an assembly seat to a Lok Sabha seat?

Only in the last Lok Sabha election did his grandfather lose—by 3,661 votes —to the BJP’s Dipak Patel ‘Sathi’. This time the BJP has replaced Sathi, who is implicated in a co-op bank scam, with Jaiprakash Patel. The latter is no political heavyweight, but with the mood in favour of the BJP, and with the Patels of the belt siding heavily with it, Solanki Jr could find the going tough. That the Congress is in disarray will not help him.

But he may well bank on the quiet, cultivated style of his father, whose KHAM (or Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) formula paid the Congress rich dividends in Gujarat. Without any fiery rhetoric, Madhavsinh— who was brought into politics by his father-in-law Ishwarsinh Chavda— had worked at the grassroots levels with otla parishads or verandah meetings.

Solanki Junior wants to try padyatras across the fields of this prosperous Charotar region, a Patel stronghold. And despite the KHAM formula of his father, Bharatsinh Solanki—an engineer by training—claims it isn’t caste affiliations that have worked for him. Even so, he may glean some help from his marriage: his wife Rekha, a doctor, is a Patel.

A problem that he may face is the Kshatriya dissidence in the Congress, a problem some in the party allege is being stoked by the BJP.

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‘‘We need a second generation of leaders to take over, with seniors fighting shy of poll battles and therefore it becomes important for Bharatsinh to win this seat,’’ said a senior Congress leader.

It won’t be a cakewalk. As one traverses the constituency, it’s clear that Bharatsinh Solanki is yet to make his presence felt in the Patel-dominated areas.

At stake here, as 50-year-old Solanki Junior takes on the BJP wave, are not just Congress fortunes: as a political observer put it, a Ranji player is testing out to see if he qualifies for the national team.