The 61 Congress MLAs who were herded out of the city by the party to take part in a one-day shibir (workshop) took out time to visit a local Shiva temple in Palanpur Banaskantha on Tuesday.
The MLAs who are staying at Balaram Resort visited the Balaram Mahadev Temple earlier in the day. Videos of them feeding monkeys and dogs also went viral on Twitter.
Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee chief Amit Chavda and Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani also visited the temple. Chavda told reporters that the party will be discussing its strategy for the rest of the assembly session. Chavda also said that many of the MLAs were new to the process and a mock poll will be held to take them through the process of voting for the Rajya Sabha polls.
Chavda also claimed that there was no fear of cross voting and the party was in touch with rebel MLAs Alpesh Thakor (Radhanpur) and Dhavalsinh Jhala (Bayad). He also claimed that all of Congress' MLA will put up a united front for the Rajya Sabha polls tomorrow. Congress Rajya Sabha candidate Chandrika Chudasama also reached resort by evening.
Vav MLA Geniben Thakor earlier told reporters that she was a Congress worker and would continue to be one. "We were together with Alpesh Thakor because he was fighting the scourge of alcoholism in many places. We the respected him as a senior leader," said Geniben, who belongs to the same community as Alpesh and is as popular a leader as him.