In the midst of a hectic campaign, State Energy Minister and BJP candidate from Botad in Bhavnagar, Saurabh Patel, takes time out to make calls to his staff in Gandhinagar. “Please ask the engineers to sit at home for a few days. Do they want me to lose this election?” he says as his ‘Jeetega Gujarat’ rath enters a village.Patel’s problem is that his achievement has now become a burden. He’s widely credited with pulling the Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) out of the red by breaking it up into profit-making companies. But in the rural belt, his initiative could well become his undoing.In Botad, farmers complain of GEB squads which led raids to check power theft and slapped huge fines on the offenders. Patel says that just goes to show how impartial he is. “How can I send squads to some areas and leave out my constituency? It would have sent a wrong message to the GEB staffers as well,” he says.His electorate thinks differently. A few kilometers away from his campaign office, Dinubhai Mangukia, a cotton farmer says sullenly, “One does not expect to be fined if the Energy Minister is your representative.” His problems are compounded on two more counts. One, being a Kadva Patel, he faces a tough task of managing the 30,000-strong Leuva Patels, a community that forms the bedrock of BJP rebels in Saurashtra. Then he faces a formidable opponent in the Congress’ Chandravadan Pithawala who also has the right caste connection. A Koli, he is a Surat-based builder and his father heads the communities’ numerous charities across the state. The Kolis form the single largest vote chunk of 60,000 in Botad and are known to vote en masse. For now, Saurabh Patel will need all his management skills to come up with a winning equation.
