Cong MLAs return to vote in Guj RS polls today, to decide Patel’s fate
It’s old war horse Shankersinh Vaghela, who holds the scales in a decisive arena, as the two principal rivals — Congres and BJP — lock horns on Ahmed Patel’s re-entry bid to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat on Tuesday.
The BJP sits pretty as its national president Amit Shah and Union textile minister Smriti Irani’s entry to the Rajya Sabha is a certainty but it chose to queer the pitch for the Congress which had fielded Ahmed Patel, political advisor to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the third RS seat from Gujarat.
The party in power in Gujarat “poached” three of six Congress legislators. They quit the Congress and turned one of them, the chief whip, Balwantsinh Rajput, as their third candidate creating a challenge for Patel. This happened in the turmoil after leader of the Congress opposition in the Gujarat Assembly, Vaghela, resigned his post and said he would quit the Congress after voting in the Rajya Sabha elections.
Now, there are four candidates in the fray for three seats as an upbeat BJP strains every nerve to defeat Sonia Gandhi’s political advisor but the Congress also fights to see him elected to the Upper House for the fifth time.
The BJP exudes confidence, borne out of the fact that two seats are a safe bet and it has succeeded in taking the battle into the rival camp by targeting Congress strategist Ahmed Patel. It is not the victory of the third BJP candidate, Balwantsinh Rajput, which is of any consequence but the fact that his win would spell the defeat of Patel, who holds great political significance.
But neither of the two main rivals are taking any chances. The Congress which had moved out 44 of it’s 51 legislators fearing further poaching, to the safe confines of Congress-ruled Karnataka, brought back its flock in the early hours of Monday and put them up at a resort in Anand. The family members of the legislators were also brought to the resort to enable them to celebrate ‘raksha bandhan’. The legislators, however, objected to the presence of the police at the resort and rejected the security offered by the administration.