Guj polls: BJP candidates list leads to resentment

Senior party leader Jadeja leaves in a huff, Saurashtra BJP leader Jethabhai Solanki quits

Gandhinagar : Resentment rose to the fore no sooner than the first list of BJP candidates for the ensuing Gujarat elections was declared with supporters of senior party leader IK Jadeja converging on the state party headquarters and raising slogans over denial of ticket to their leader. Jadeja, a senior party leader and former minister was a strong contender for the Wadhwan seat in Surendranagar district of Saurashtra region. However, when the first list of 70 BJP candidates was announced on Friday, the seat had been allotted to an industrialist Dhanjibhai Patel. Jadeja was keen to contest from the seat. But the move to combat PAAS seems to be weighing heavily on minds of BJP leadership which chose a Patidar candidate from Hardik Patel’s sub-caste to contest ignoring claims of the Kshatriya leader.

Highly-placed sources said Jadeja had sometime earlier met the prime minister to convey his fears that his claims may be disregarded by party chief Amit Shah since he is closer to his rival former chief minister Anandiben Patel.

Supporters of the Kshatriya leader are up in arms and have mounted pressure asking him to quit the party. Jadeja was in the midst of a media get-together at the newly set-up state

party briefing room in Ahmedabad, accepting birthday greetings when information came in that the Wadhwan seat has been offered to someone else. Jadeja left the media interaction in a huff.

His supporters are now demanding that he be nominated as the party candidate from the nearby Dhrangadhra seat. “When an outsider is fielded, resentment of the local populace comes naturally. However, I am very much in the party and will continue to do so,” Jadeja said. However, such is not the case with another Saurashtra BJP leader Jethabhai Solanki, the patty legislator from Kodinar. Solanki, a prominent Dalit face, quit the BJP and said that I do not want to go out and canvass for the BJP so I have resigned from all posts. Solanki won the seat last polls with a margin of over 60,000 votes.

Reports of protests and resignations are also coming in from various parts of the state, particularly south Gujarat and Saurashtra and party chief Amit Shah was burning midnight oil and daylight energy at the party headquarters trying to control the fallout of the first list even late on Saturday.

Meanwhile the BJP announced that three other PAAS leaders Ketan Patel, Amrish Patel and Shweta Patel had joined the BJP. They were welcomed into the party by union minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

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