Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel’s surprise announcement on Monday that she wanted to resign reveals open infighting within the state BJP, with the saffron party’s all-India chief Amit Shah playing a lead p
Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel’s surprise announcement on Monday that she wanted to resign reveals open infighting within the state BJP, with the saffron party’s all-India chief Amit Shah playing a lead part in the denouement, as Anandiben supporters have hinted. This lends the matter a dimension that goes beyond Gujarat.
Ms Patel, Gujarat’s first woman chief minister, had been loyal to Narendra Modi throughout his career as CM of Gujarat, and she was politically rewarded for sticking close. This went to the extent that a Cabinet meeting in 2010, when Mr Modi was CM, cleared a proposal for a suspicious land grant at ridiculous rates for a company with which Ms Patel’s daughter Anar was linked, and this has become a scandal.
When Mr Modi shifted to New Delhi, he handpicked Ms Patel as his successor to lead the Gujarat government although he was aware there was considerable opposition to her elevation within the BJP. When Ms Patel called on the PM in New Delhi in May, she was apparently assured she won’t be replaced although the rumblings against her were rising.
But political circumstances have forced her out. Her benefactor could no longer save her. In that sense, this is the first tower in the BJP citadel to fall after Mr Modi became PM. Corruption charges against the BJP-run state governments of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and insinuations made against external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in the Lalit Modi affair, were brazenly stonewalled by the Modi government.
The Gujarat CM’s removal became unavoidable as Mr Modi’s favourite ran a corrupt show (many instances of which are now being cited), she projected an anti-dalit face, specially after the disgraceful July 11 episode at Una in Gujarat when harijan families were flogged by “gau rakshaks”, who seem to have got a free run and fear nobody, for doing their traditional work of skinning dead cows.
After this, in protest, many Gujarat dalits consumed pesticides and took their own life. This is real bad news for the BJP, which has been trying hard since last year to cultivate dalits for their vote, specially in the coming UP Assembly elections. Thousands of dalits rallied in Ahmedabad on Sunday and pledged not to do their traditional cleaning work. The news is spreading. The BJP is once again being seen as an anti-dalit party. It is a bad advertisement for the so-called “Gujarat model” of development.
Last year the Anandiben government viciously lathicharged the patidar (Patel) community, the BJP’s main vote reserve in Gujarat, when they held a protest in support of their quota demand, drawing comparisons with Gen. Dwyer of Jalianwala Bagh ignominy. Anandiben’s rule has damaged the BJP’s electoral prospects. A rescue act can’t be easy.
