Congress leaders, who are confident that the Gujarat Assembly polls in 2017 will be historic due to the dalit and Patel factors, feel that projecting a chief ministerial candidate could be “risky”.
Congress leaders, who are confident that the Gujarat Assembly polls in 2017 will be historic due to the dalit and Patel factors, feel that projecting a chief ministerial candidate could be “risky”.
The Congress, which has been reluctant to project CM candidates in the Assembly polls, recently made Sheila Diskhit its face in the upcoming UP Assembly polls, but has not formally named Punjab PCC chief Amrinder Singh as its CM candidate yet. It will fight the Uttarakhand Assembly polls in early 2017 under the leadership of CM Harish Rawat.
As for the Gujarat battle, the state Congress leaders, including party MPs, see a change at the ground level. Accordng to them, the all-powerful Patel community wants to teach the BJP a lesson this time.
A senior Congress leader even predicted a revolt in the BJP Legislature Party in Gujarat against the Vijay Rupani government before the state Assembly polls. Asked then why the Congress can’t aggressively go against the BJP, which has antagonised the Sangh Parivar on cow vigilantes, dalits and Patels, by projecting a CM candidate, the leader said he fears that this could be counter-productive.
While the PCC president Bharatsinh Solanki and the CLP leader Shankarsinh Vaghela cannot be the CM candidate for various reasons, the party cannot afford to project former PCC chief or CLP leaders as this could intensify factional fights, he said.
“The Congress has 33 per cent votes in Gujarat and its seats in the state Asembly too increased in the 2007 and 2012 elections. Now,our stretegy is to make inroads in urban areas and attract OBCs,” he said.
The two-day meeting of top Congress leaders in Ahmedabad recently discussed the strategy. They had asked party corporators in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Vadodara, Junagadh, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar and Rajkot to reveal how the party could to regain political space in urban areas. They said it is possible if the party aggressively takes up their issues of unemployment, price rise and housing.
