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Journalism of Courage
With the Congress ending up with its worst performance in Gujarat, dropping to 17 seats from 77 last time, its newly elected Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani said he regretted that the party “did not use me enough” during the elections.
Having scraped through in Vadgam against the BJP’s Manibhai Vaghela, Mevani, who is also the working president of the Gujarat Congress, told The Indian Express Friday: “I strongly feel I could have been used in a much better way; not after I filed my nomination, but much earlier. I fail to understand that when they (the Congress) have a face like me, who can catch people’s imagination, who has credibility, who is solidly anti-BJP and has a good following, why could he not address public meetings across the state?… Jan sabha karvana chahiye tha (Public meetings should have been held), to energise the people, the Dalits.”
A Dalit leader who rose to prominence in the wake of the Una incident, and won his first election as an Independent backed by the Congress in 2017, Mevani ran an energetic campaign. Another young, charismatic leader of the Congress, Kanhaiya Kumar, turned up to campaign for him along with Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi.
While listed among the Congress’s star campaigners, Mevani only addressed public meetings in some north Gujarat seats in the same district, and one in Vejalpur constituency of Ahmedabad. Most of these were organised after he had filed his nomination, when he was also caught up with his own campaign. While the Congress was chary about engaging with the 2002 riots issue, Mevani raised the controversial remission of sentence of the gangrape and murder convicts in the Bilkis Bano case at every meeting.
In 2021, Hardik Patel, then a Congress working president, had told The Indian Express in an interview that the party was not “using me enough”. Asked about the fact that what he said was the same as Hardik’s observation, Mevani said: “I don’t want to blame the party.”
Hardik, the face of the 2017 Patidar quota agitation against the BJP government, was instrumental in bringing Mevani into the Congress. Now in the BJP, Hardik won from Viramgam in this election (his first) by 51,707 votes. The BJP too didn’t use Hardik much, despite listing him as a star campaigner; but the party with its galaxy of stars could perhaps afford that.
One reason Mevani was confined to Vadgam, a Scheduled Caste reserved seat, which he had also won in 2017, was the anticipated tough fight for him in the seat and a leg injury limiting his mobility. Manibhai Vaghela, who fought on the BJP ticket, had left the Congress after the party forced him to not contest from Vadgam, his seat, in 2017, as it backed Mevani. The gap between the two leaders Thursday was 4,928 votes.
Addressing a press conference Friday in Delhi, Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh blamed the local organisation for the party’s disastrous showing in Gujarat.
Left bereft by the central leadership, with even the Gandhis not turning up to campaign barring one rally by Rahul, senior Congress leaders, on the other hand, told this party about a campaign that took off very late and was then grounded by the lack of finances.
Admitting that funds were scarce, Mevani contrasted this with the BJP, saying it was “no longer a party but a giant corporate entity”, adding that it was a crucial factor. “The BJP has enormous money that no political party in the country can ever hope to have. If we could use cameras from various angles, spend Rs 15 lakh on hoardings instead of Rs 1 lakh, we could have had better visibility.”
At the same time, Mevani said, he could not say “what I can attribute this thumping victory of the BJP to”.
Calling for the Congress to do some “deep introspection”, Mevani said: “I am new to this post, but we will have to sit together and do marathon sessions, go to the people with a new strategy and plan, with energy and vision. We need to go into mohallas and cities… There is no other alternative.”
