Congress likely to refuse Hardik
Election result might affect Rahul’s chance, feel leaders
Even as Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi is expected to meet Patidar leader Hardik Patel during his visit to Gujarat in November, party strategists are in no mood to give in to the Patidar demand for reservation under the existing OBC quota in the state.
Congress leaders would, if fact, prefer if Mr Patel’s Patidar Anaamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) contests elections on its own in the Patidar-dominated seats as they feel this would cut into the BJP’s Patel vote bank and benefit them.
Sources in the Congress said that during negotiations with Mr Patel, party leaders felt that he was anyway in no mood to join the Congress, but was determined to ensure that the BJP loses.
“He is not interested in anybody winning. He just wants the BJP to lose,” a senior Congress leader told this newspaper.
Ahead of the Gujarat Assembly polls, the Gandhi family loyalists have begun an exercise to push for Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as party chief.
With the end of state organisational elections, party president Sonia Gandhi is expected to call for a CWC meet to formally propose her successor’s name.
However, with the Congress president having powers to announce a successor without calling a CWC, an effort is on to persuade Ms Gandhi to declare her son as party president in the next 20 days.
This is because, the loyalists feel that if the Congress gets trounced in the Gujarat polls, it would become more difficult to do the same.
Mr Gandhi, who has been actively campaigning in Gujarat, on Monday, chaired twin meetings on demonetisation and the GST following which he attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked finance ministers of Congress-ruled states to raise issues in the GST council.
The issues include problems of compliance with small and medium enterprises, single unit people and job workers.
The party vice-president targeted Mr Modi, saying he had destroyed the country’s economy with the both note ban and GST. He alleged that the Prime Minister had failed to understand the troubles of the commoners.
While the economy was able to withstand the torpedo of note ban, it could not deal with the GST, alleged Mr Gandhi. The economy is in tatters now, he said.
Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal at the meeting, said that BJP has an overbearing presence in the GST Council. “I must confess that there was an amount of arrogance with the government when we had made these demands at Hyderabad. But, ever since Mr Sinha’s letter has become public and there is a groundswell of opinion against the present form of GST, they are slightly more receptive,” Mr Badal said.
Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was also part of the meeting and noted with concern, the faulty design, architecture, and complication of compliances, saying, it has killed jobs and businesses.
He wondered as to why the government was celebrating the first anniversary of note ban on November 8.
The Congress and other Opposition parties have already announced plans to hold protests across the country on the demonetisation anniversary.