Former Gujarat Congress MLA Raghavji Patel. Image Courtesy: ANI/Twitter
Raghavji Patel, the former legislator from Jamnagar rural who was in the eye of the storm as his vote was declared invalid by the Election Commission in the recently concluded Rajya Sabha polls, on Friday joined the BJP as promised.
However, that is not the problem for Congress as he had already made his intent on joining BJP soon after he quit Congress last month. What has hit the Congress party hard is that it has seen over 500 of its workers in the district walk with Raghavji into BJP. The members of Dhrol, Jodiya and Jamanagar taluka panchayats, which were won by Congress last year have now moved to ruling BJP. Not just these panchayats, but it has lost control of Jamnagar and Dhrol marketing yards too.
Raghavji joined BJP formally in presence of Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and state BJP chief Jitu Vaghani, along with another former legislator from Congress Hakubha Jadeja. Both the men are part of 14 legislators who quit the party and resigned as legislators along with Shankarsinh Vaghela. Other than Raghavji and Jadeja, over half a dozen senior Congressmen from Jamnagar district, presidents, vice-presidents and members of taluka panchayats, as well as 160 sarpanches and vice-sarpanches quit Congress to join BJP at the event.
The 14 legislators who had quit Congress during and after Rajya Sabha elections held recently have been joining BJP in a staggered manner. While three had joined BJP before RS polls, 10 others had already announced their intent to do so soon after voting in RS polls was complete. With the big man Shankarsinh Vaghela claiming that he would not be joining any political party, the BJP has been making a spectacle of the move by these men, holding multiple rallies in the respective constituencies of the rebel former Congress legislators and formally inducting them into the party.
While most of them have formally joined BJP, Shankarsinh Vaghela’s son Mahendrasinh Vaghela too is slated to join the saffron party pretty soon. He has already held meetings with BJP president Amit Shah to finalise the formalities.