Its choices few, Gujarat Congress now deals with surprise nominee quitting race

Gupta, 46, had been removed as head of the Congress’s social media team two years ago after his family’s association with a firm promoted by a confidant of Union Home Minister Amit Shah became public.

All had been going swimmingly after the Congress announced his name on March 12, in what was seen as the party letting bygones be bygones. Gupta set Wednesday as the date for his first public meeting in the Ahmedabad East seat, at Bapunagar; March 23 for inauguration of his election office; and put together a 100-member team for his campaign – before he said he was withdrawing.

The fact that he chose to do so via X, posting an image of the letter he wrote to Gujarat Congress chief Shaktisinh Gohil, has also not gone down well. Incidentally, hours before Gupta made his letter public, his father Rajkumar, a Congressman of 40 years, and a member of the party’s disciplinary committee, sent his resignation to Gohil – provoking bitter party leaders to accuse the father and son of “pressure tactics”.

Rajkumar had fought from the same seat 20 years back, then called Ahmedabad, before it was delimited and renamed.

After his withdrawal and his father’s resignation became known, Gupta told reporters, “My father was getting anxiety attacks every 15 minutes… Yesterday, I was in a meeting when I heard that he had resigned (from the Congress). I called him and tried convincing him to let me fight, that it was a matter of my prestige. But he shouted at me and fainted there and then.”

Rajkumar has been in ICU since March 16 — four days after the Congress announced candidates for 7 of the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, including Ahmedabad East.

On attacks from within Congress ranks against him, Gupta said: “No one needs to lecture me. My father was with the Congress for 40 years and I have been serving the party selflessly for 15 years. I did my work with full commitment despite being attacked by some insiders.”

However, with the Congress already bleeding – losing 4 of its 17 MLAs since the December 22 Assembly elections – not many are keeping quiet. Former MLA and Congress leader from Valsad Gaurav Pandya wrote on social media that while he wished Rajkumar well, “… you (should) have taken party into confidence instead of embarrassing it with public withdrawal of candidature”.

Ahmedabad City District Congress Committee Himmatsinh Patel said that, for once, the party felt it was on track having put out a list early. “The candidates would have had time to prepare.”

But now, Congress leaders admitted, the party is not sure about finding the right candidates on time – especially ones it can be sure won’t switch sides. The party’s Central Election Committee that met in Delhi on Tuesday to decide on the remaining seats for Gujarat, among other states, reportedly could not reach a conclusion and was “adjourned”.

A top Congress leader talked about how the party is losing big names giving the example of former Gujarat chief Arjun Modhwadia . “Who would have thought someone like him would join the BJP? They may give him a ticket for the Porbandar bypoll, even a ministerial berth, but then what?”

However, others feel the Congress is to blame, letting matters slide, with Modhwadia seen as not having got his due for long before he left. On March 4, the day he quit, Pandya put a post on X, tagging Congress general secretary K C Venugopal, saying: “When leadership gives go by to merits & discards dedicated workers on the basis of personal likes & dislikes, organisation suffers.”

An old-time Congress leader said Rajkumar too felt his defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from Ahmedabad East was partly due to sabotage from within. “He would say people within the party whom he had helped, pulled him down and ensured his defeat. He did not want Rohan to go through the same,” the leader said.

Rajkumar, though, came nowhere close at the time to winning the seat, a BJP bastion – losing by 77,605 votes to former BJP Union minister Harin Pathak.

Another Congress leader said Rajkumar’s fears were not misplaced. “In 2001, when the Congress had wrested the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) for the first time, Rajkumar stood for elections to the municipal school board but a rival candidate from the Congress won. He had the same fears regarding his son.”

The leader said that with Ahmed Patel dead, those like Rajkumar who were close to him see no one with the skills of “ironing out internal rivalries”.

The controversy that Rohan Gupta faced in June 2022 involved the revelation that his wife Yogita and brother Arpan were partners in Sunbirds Infrabuild, a firm whose promoter was Amit Shah’s confidant Ajay Patel, chairman of the Gujarat State Cooperative Bank and Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank.

In 2018, the same Ajay Patel had filed a criminal defamation case against then Congress president Rahul Gandhi over remarks made by him against Amit Shah, alleging that a large quantity of demonetised money was exchanged at the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, where Shah was one of the directors.

A top Gujarat Congress leader said one reason for Rajkumar’s anxiety was that the matter would be dug up again, after the ticket to his son.

Not all in the Gujarat Congress incidentally were opposed to the ticket to Gupta, pointing to “his wide experience, having headed the national IT cell of the Congress since 2019”. He also had a big role in the party’s successful ‘Vikas gando thayo chhe (Development has gone crazy)’ campaign during the 2017 Assembly elections, when the Congress had won its highest seats in the House since 1995, finishing at 77 out of 182.