Gujarat Congress is bleeding MLAs ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha polls

In a blow to the Gujarat Congress, Khambhat MLA Chirag Patel quit the party and MLA post on December 20. With this, the Congress’s tally in the Gujarat Assembly is down to 16.

Adding to the party’s troubles, Chirag hinted that more MLAs are in line to quit in the coming days. His statement was reiterated by Congress’s Patan MLA Kirit Patel on December 21. “Three or four resignations from Congress are coming soon,” Kirit told media persons on December 21.

“If a person’s voice is not heard, he is bound to step down from an organisation. I believe three or four MLAs from the party will leave soon. If the Congress party wants to win in Gujarat, it must convene an immediate organisational meeting. The party leadership must take measures to prevent MLAs from resigning. BJP would have tackled the issue by holding an emergency organisational meeting,” he added.

Repeat occurrence

In Gujarat, the pattern of Congress MLAs leaving the party ahead of elections is not new. In 2020, ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls, the Congress had divided its legislators into three groups and had to keep them confined in three different resorts in Rajasthan to prevent the BJP from poaching the MLAs.

Between the 2017 and 2022 assembly polls, about 15 Congress MLAs quit the party to join the BJP. Of these, 12 got BJP tickets. Nine of the turncoat MLAs won, giving away Congress’s traditional strong seats to the BJP.

In the 2022 state polls, the Congress could bag just 17 seats, which has now come down to 16 with the resignation of Chirag Patel. The BJP’s MLA numbers, meanwhile, have gone up from 156 to 158 (earlier this week an AAP MLA also quit to join the party).

“If you observe carefully, the BJP has been attempting to break into the Congress bastion in central Gujarat from the year 2017,” Professor Hemant Shah, an Ahmedabad-based political commentator, told The Federal.

“During 2017 polls, while the Congress was under the illusion that it had gained a new support base amongst Patels, the party lost five traditional seats in central Gujarat. Even though the BJP bagged 97 seats, its lowest ever in the history of Gujarat electoral politics, it stayed ahead of the Congress in central Gujarat, winning 25 of 40 seats. The BJP had won only 20 seats there in 2012,” Shah added. “Since then, Congress has consistently lost elections in central Gujarat including the dairy cooperative polls that the BJP won for the first time.”

Blow to Congress

Although the state Congress leadership is yet to make a statement on the move by the party MLAs, it has admitted that Chirag Patel’s departure will further weaken the party in central Gujarat.

“Patel’s exit comes as a surprise for many of us within the party,” a senior Congress leader told The Federal on the condition of anonymity. “Although we had known for about a month that he was not happy with the party leadership, most of us were sure the Congress state and central leadership would convince him to stay back.”

“We could not have afforded to lose another leader from central Gujarat. Anand was once a Congress stronghold with leaders like Madhavsinh Solanki and Bharatsinh Solanki and now we hardly have any presence there. Except for Amit Chavda, who also belongs to the Solanki family, the Congress doesn’t have a leader in central Gujarat currently,” the leader added.

“Chirag Patel has a strong rural network in central Gujarat. His absence will impact us in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Patel was one of the MLAs who was assigned with the responsibility of central Gujarat for the Lok Sabha poll campaign,” he further said.

“The party is in talks with its central leadership and until senior leaders arrive at a decision, I cannot comment on the situation,” said Manish Doshi, state Congress spokesperson.

Operation Lotus?

A Congress veteran claimed that the party has been losing its leaders to BJP owing to the saffron party’s strategy of ‘Operation Lotus’. The term refers to the BJP’s strategy for gaining power in states where it lacks enough seats to form a government on its own.

“We lost several states to the BJP because they poached our MLAs. When some of us told the party leadership that BJP was trying to poach our MLAs, especially from central Gujarat and rural constituencies, the leadership did not take it seriously. We were told BJP is already in power in Gujarat so it would not need to take up the strategy in the state,” rued the leader.

“But the BJP had begun its hunt for Congress leaders from central Gujarat, who are known to have a strong grassroots base in rural areas, way back in 2020, ahead of Rajya Sabha polls. Three years later, we are now reduced to 16 MLAs in the state,” he pointed out.