Senior Gujarat OBC leader Bavaliya quits Cong, joins BJP

PTI

 

AHMEDABAD

In a blow to the Congress ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, senior OBC community leader and five-time legislator Kunwarji Bavaliya on Tuesday resigned from the party and is set to be inducted as a minister in the BJP government in Gujarat.

Bavaliya, who alleged that he was leaving the Congress as president Rahul Gandhi was “playing casteist politics in the party”, was welcomed to the BJP by its Gujarat chief Jitu Vaghani.

Vaghani said Bavaliya will be inducted in the state cabinet later today by Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

In an email to Gandhi, informing him about his resignation, Bavaliya expressed displeasure over the party’s functioning in the state, Congress sources said.

Bavaliya, a Koli community leader from the Saurashtra region, drove to the state BJP headquarters here after resigning from the Congress and submitting his resignation as legislator to Gujarat Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi.

By inducting the leader of the numerically strong Koli community, the BJP is hopeful that voters from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the region will tilt towards it.

The BJP had faced reverses in the Saurashtra region in the Gujarat polls last year after the drifting away of the Patidar community, following the quota agitation led by Hardik Patel.

Bavaliya said he was not able to fulfil the people’s expectations while being in the Congress.

Meanwhile, former Gujarat Congress MLA Bholabhai Gohel, who had joined the ruling BJP after the Rajya Sabha polls in August last year, on Tuesday rejoined the main opposition party.

Gohel was re-inducted into the party by Gujarat Congress president Amit Chavda and Leader of Opposition in the assembly Paresh Dhanani at a function held at state party headquarter here.

He represented the Jasdan seat in Rajkot district in the assembly from 2012 to 2017.

Incidentally, Gohel switched sides just hours after sitting Congress MLA from Jasdan, Kunvarji Bavaliya, quit the party and also the assembly seat, and joined the BJP.