Sonia aide pulls off win after tense vote
new delhi — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has failed in its bid to oust the opposition Congress party’s top strategist from the upper house of parliament, in a rare setback to its effort to secure national political supremacy.
Ahmed Patel, Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, clung on in Tuesday’s vote to the seat he has held for 24 years, despite a push by Modi’s team to chisel away the support of lawmakers from his party.
“This is not just my victory,” Patel said on social network Twitter. “It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power, muscle power and abuse of state machinery.”
The indirect election of three representatives by lawmakers from the western state of Gujarat would normally be a low-key affair. But Modi’s top strategist, Amit Shah, invested huge political capital in his attempt to oust Patel.
Shah ‘turned’ a handful of Congress lawmakers, forcing the opposition party to evacuate its state lawmakers to an out-of-state golf resort to isolate them from his advances.
The results were announced after the Election Commission cancelled the votes of two Congress lawmakers who had defected, in a last twist to the fortnightlong poll drama.
Shah and another minister from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were comfortably reelected to the two other seats that were up for grabs.
Modi won the biggest mandate in 30 years in the 2014 general election, giving him control of the lower house. But, despite a string of regional election wins, he still lacks a majority in the upper house that represents India’s 29 states and has proven to be a stumbling block for its legislative agenda. —
This is not just my victory. It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power, muscle power and abuse of state machinery Ahmed Patel