Several leaders opposed to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, some of them still with the BJP but are sidelined in the party, held a meeting at the residence of the former Chief Minister, Keshubhai Patel, here on Wednesday to formulate a strategy for the coming Assembly elections.
This will be followed by a sammelan of the “Patel” leaders at Dholka, near Ahmedabad, on Saturday.
Mr. Keshubhai Patel, who has opened a front against Mr. Modi advising the Patels to vote against the BJP this time, and some other former leaders of the BJP are likely to go to Delhi next week to call on the veteran leader L.K. Advani, and the party high command to apprise them of the “dangerous situation” developing in Gujarat.
The Wednesday's meeting was attended among others by the former Union Minister, Kashiram Rana; the former Chief Minister, Suresh Mehta, who has since quit the BJP to form a voluntary organisation of “Enlightened Citizens”; the former Minister of State for Home, Gordhan Jhadafiya, who has resigned from the BJP to form his own Mahagujarat Janata Party; the former Union Minister of State, A.K. Patel; the former MP, K. D. Jeswani; the former Mayor of Surat, Fakir Chauhan; and senior RSS leader Bhaskarrao Damle.
In a brief chat with reporters before the meeting, Mr. Mehta said: “We are meeting to discuss the grave situation developing in Gujarat under the Modi administration and the situation is fast going out of control.”
Mr. Jhadafiya said all those attended the meeting were volunteers of the RSS. “We may belong to any political party, but at the end of the day we are all swayamsevaks of the RSS.” His comment, however, did not go down well with the Patel leaders of the Congress who were ready to join hands with the anti-Modi factions within the BJP.
Code of conduct
Meanwhile, Mr. Mehta has written a letter to the Election Commission demanding that the model code of conduct be enforced in the State forthwith following a reported “advice” by BJP national vice-president Purshottam Rupala at a party workers' meeting recently to “make arrangements for buying votes” before the code came into force. Mr. Rupala, however, denied having made any such observation claiming that the BJP would not have to “buy votes” as the voters themselves were “more than eager” to retain Mr. Modi in power.
