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Viramgam (Gujarat)/Ahmedabad: Hardik Patel, the young Patidar community leader who is now with the BJP, today said his former party Congress has no vision for Gujarat. “Rahul Gandhi is busy with his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ in the South and elsewhere,” he said, pressing on the fact that the Congress top leader’s marquee march isn’t passing through poll-bound Gujarat. Contesting his first election, having recently joined the ruling BJP after quitting as Gujarat Congress Working President, Hardik Patel told NDTV that the Congress “never stops anyone from leaving”, and jibed that the party “does not need Gujaratis”.He denied allegations that the fear of being jailed over pending cases, including some from the time of the Patidar quota agitation, made him switch sides. “I still have 32 cases on me. If you think joining a party will relieve me from that, then that’s not it. Law and courts are independent,” said the 29-year-old, who did not contest previous elections as he did not fulfil the minimum-age criterion of 25. “I had to take a decision as the Congress was consistently speaking against Gujaratis. I told them not to speak against businesspeople,” he claimed, and stressed his assertion that the state unit of the party hesitated in donating towards Ram Temple construction in UP’s Ayodhya. “If you don’t take a stand on issues that concern Gujarat’s people, how will they like you?”He said no one asked him to stay: “The Congress doesn’t need people like us who are hardworking. It just wants sycophants.”He denied that switching parties means changing his ideology. “What is ideology? Nothing but a spirit of public service. I have the same ideology from the start,” he said, drawing a family connection with the BJP, “My father helped establish the BJP in the Viramgram region. He was an office-bearer of the party.”Not long ago, Hardik Patel was with Congress. In mid-2022, he exited saying he’d wasted 3 years of his political life with the party. (File)Confident that he’ll win Viramgram in the election next month — the segment has had a Congress MLA for 10 years now — Hardik Patel said he’s banking on local anti-incumbency and “the people’s increasing trust in PM Narendra Modi and the BJP”. He stressed that the assembly contest is fought on local issues. At the macro level, he claimed, “People have anger within them regarding the Congress.”On community arithmetic, he stressed that the Patel/Patidar community has “always been the vote bank of the BJP”. “Even when there was an agitation in 2017 (elections), 60 per cent of the Patidars voted for the BJP, because they cannot trust the Congress,” he said.Sticking to the BJP line, he dismissed the idea that this time AAP could make it a triangular contest. “The BJP is winning over 150 (of the 182) seats. We don’t care if the AAP and Congress fight each other.” Meanwhile, the Congress, which has had some rallies by Rahul Gandhi as part of its low-key campaign, says the relatively muted push will capture a “strong undercurrent” of anti-incumbency against the BJP government of 27 consecutive years.Milind Deora, the party’s observer for the state polls, called it a very localised, personalised and orthodox campaign, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi alluded to.”I would not agree that we are not putting our best effort. It is a very different type of campaign from the last time,” he told news agency PTI. “In the 2017 polls, there were issues such as the Patidar agitation, demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, which led to public demonstrations against the government,” he said.This time, there is a very “strong undercurrent” of anti-incumbency against the state government and the Congress is carrying out a very localised, personalised and orthodox campaign, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi alluded to, Mr Deora said.”This time the strategy is different; it is not something as visible as last time because of the events preceding that election, but the party is on the ground, exposing the government and taking advantage of anti-incumbency,” he claimed.



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