Hardik quits Cong, blames top leaders
AHMEDABAD: Patidar leader Hardik Patel, who joined the Congress a little over three years ago, resigned from the party on Wednesday, ahead of a possible move to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to contest state elections later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Patel’s one-page resignation letter — he put out copies in English and Hindi on Twitter — was scathing in its criticism of the Congress and its leaders who, he said, did not have a road map for the people, were non-serious and behaved as if they hated Gujarat and Gujaratis.
“Whenever our country faced challenges and when the Congress needed leadership, Congress leaders were enjoying abroad,” said the former Gujarat Congress working president, who hit national headlines in 2015 when he, then a 21-year-old, became the face of the Patel Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) to seek inclusion of Gujarat’s Patel community as other backward classes (OBC) and get quota beners efits in education and jobs.
“Be it building the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, revocation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, implementation of GST (Goods and Services Tax) — India wanted solutions for these subjects for a long time and Congress only played the role of a roadblock and was always only obstructive. When it came to issues related to India, Gujarat and my Patidar community — the Congress’s only stand was to oppose whatever the Government of India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji did. Congress today has been rejected in almost every state of India because the party and its leadership have not been able to present a basic road map to the people,” Patel said.
Patel’s letter spoke of his disappointment when party worklike him travelled 500600km to attend a meeting and discuss issues but found local leaders busy trying to ensure that some senior Congress leader from Delhi was served “his chicken sandwich on time”.
“Whenever I tried to draw the attention of party leaders towards pressing issues of Gujarat, it seemed they were more focused on their mobile phone screens and other gadgets,” Patel said, describing a “lack of seriousness about all issues” as a major problem with the Congress’s “senior leadership”.
Patel’s resignation from the Congress was a “politics of dishonesty, betrayal”, Raghu Sharma, Congress in charge of Gujarat said on Wednesday.
This is politics of dishonesty, of betrayal. He was a star campaigner in the recent elections in five states. He was bad-mouthing the BJP in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab. What happened overnight?” Sharma said. “He was in touch with the BJP for the last six months for the withdrawal of cases against him. This is politics of opportunism. Gujarat understands this.”