OBC face Alpesh joins Congress, support from Dalits & Patels threatens to upset BJP in Gujarat

Just a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is about to go on a sop-offering spree in Gujarat, there is bad news for the BJP.

News of two leaders - Other Backward Castes (OBC) leader Alpesh Thakor and Hardik Patel, the face of the Patidar agitation against the state government - getting cosy with the Congress has upset the BJP as it threatens to upset the party's prospects of an outright win in the poll-bound state.

Alpesh has reportedly announced that he would join the Congress on Wednesday in the presence of the party vice president Rahul Gandhi at a rally.

On Saturday, reports came rolling in that the Congress has asked Alpesh, Hardik and youth Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani to join forces with the party to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming assembly polls.

In response to the news, Hardik Patel took to Twitter to say, “We do not want to contest elections as this is not our goal. We want our rights and justice. We are fighting against arrogance and victory will be ours.”

While there has been no official response from Jignesh till now, he has been clear about the fact that Dalits will not vote for BJP this time around.

The numbers game

The coming together of these forces against the BJP will make a repeat performance by the saffron party in its citadel of Gujarat, which is also referred to as the laboratory of the Sangh Parivar, a very tedious task.

Numerically speaking, the OBCs are the biggest chunk of the state's population, accounting for at least 48% of the total vote share. Within this community, the two sub castes of Thakors, also known as Solanki in coastal belt, account for 22% of the state's voters. OBCs have traditionally voted hyper local in favour of candidates from their community.

Patels account for around 14% of the state's voters and have been going with the BJP over the last three decades ever since the former Congress chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki came to power in 1985 riding the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) formula. Their alliance with the BJP was complete when the party declared Keshubhai Patel as the state chief minister after it came to power in mid nineties.

Dalits form a mere 7% of the population in the state and nobody has bothered them in terms of electoral numbers till now as the community is very scattered. But ever since the Una flogging incident, they have made their presence felt with subsequent movements launched by Jignesh and others over the last two years.

The three communities of Patidars or Patels, OBCs and Dalits have traditionally never come together like this. Instead, there have been enmities among them at the local levels. While Patels and OBCs and also the OBCs and Dalits have generally been keeping to themselves, there have been many occasions where Dalits have accused them of high handedness.

In fact, Alpesh was the one who had stood at the other pole opposing the demand for reservation to Patels in government education institutions and jobs sought by Hardik two years ago. The OBC sentiment at that point was that the Patels would get reservation at their cost. But soon, the fog was lifted by none other than the BJP government that this would not be the case if Patels were given reservation.

The three faces

Alpesh has been well accepted and received across the state because of his drive against liquor. According to him, the liquor trade has been at the core of the maladies of the OBCs. In the recent past, there were reports of him being lured by the BJP but his own OBC segment had threatened him with a social boycott if this was to be the case. The BJP has also gone over board trying to woo the OBCs ahead of the polls with sops and even its national president Amit Shah holding special rallies on the OBC turf.

Hardik, on the other hand, has successfully been embarrassing the BJP in the state. The saffron party had to face slogans against Amit Shah in Sardar Patel's village of Karamsad recently, something which was unimaginable till a while back. Sources say that Hardik's small meetings away from the media glare are proving to be very effective in turning the youth against the BJP. Even Patel businessmen have started airing resentment against the party after the shoddy implementation of the Goods and Services (GST) tax in the state.

Mevani stands in the most precarious position. But he has been very clear in his line of thought, particularly while addressing the Dalit and Patel relationship issue. “We will protest and lodge legal cases against the Patels if they assault us or continue with their high handedness. But at the same time we are not averse to coming together on a common minimum political platform,” he had told this reporter this week.

“Everybody knows it very well that in India, no matter what your ideology is, elections are won on caste equations. If the Dalits, Patels and OBCs come together on a common platform things will become very difficult for the BJP which is also bearing the luggage of an anti incumbency that is more than two decades old,” pointed out a senior political analyst based in Ahmedabad.

The Congress has rolled the dice on the eve of Modi's yet another visit to the state on Sunday. It remains to be seen how he and his party respond to this new challenge. The fight is only expected to get more and more shrill from now onwards.

Counter strategy

Meanwhile, BJP has also launched a political counter attack. The party inducted two of the close associates of Hardik Patel into its fold minutes after OBC leader Alpesh announced his decision to join the Congress.

Both Varun Patel and Reshma Patel are learnt to have met Amit Shah during the day and their induction was announced later in the evening. The two are said to have been core members of Hardik's team.

Sources say that they were the key strategists for Hardik deciding what to say on public platforms. Sources further said that sometime back a video of Varun in speaking at an event in Mehsana in north Gujarat had gone viral where he had allegedly called Modi a 'pickpocket'. Their joining the BJP is said to be a blow to the Hardik camp.

The Congress has also hinted at forging a pre poll alliance with Sharad Pawar led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and also the lone Janata Dal (United) MLA Chhotu Vasava. The latter had helped Congress win the Rajya Sabha for Ahmed Patel seat by a slender margin recently. Vasava had recently given a call for the Congress to have an arrangement with all the non Sangh Parivar political forces ahead of the polls.