Mehsana municipality: Seven corporators from Congress cross over to BJP

The Mehsana move has ruffled feathers of old guards in both the parties who believe that the saffron party was favouring people with vested interests rather than those who do selfless service.

Speaking to The Indian Express, BJP’s former Unjha member of legislative assembly (MLA), Narayan Patel said, “People join the BJP automatically, be it bar association members, godmen or artists… Everyone wants to save their seat, some join the BJP on ideology while the others join for their selfish interests. They must be thinking that it is better to join the BJP now and spend the next two-and-a-half years without any difficulty,” said Patel.

Congress won 29 seats in the Mehsana municipality polls after the 2015 Patidar agitation as the constituency was considered to be a Patel stronghold. However, the breach started appearing in February 2019 when Unjha MLA Asha Patel quit as MLA just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and joined the BJP.

Narayan Patel also said Congress managed to win so many seats in Mehsana due to the Patidar agitation. “Due to the reservation agitation, such people who have never contested any elections in their life won seats. Be it tehsil, municipality or district, people from the Congress won due to the agitation. However, the Congress is slowly losing ground in Mehsana as there is no competition for the BJP right now.

“The saffron party is now like a swift stream and no matter, how efficient a swimmer is, he cannot swim against the tide for long. Prime Minister Modi has won the support of the youth after the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir and I believe Congress will take years to recover from it,” said Patel.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Manish Doshi, spokesperson for Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, blamed the BJP for playing dirty tactics in order to woo Congress leaders through unethical means.

“Since the Congress won the municipality elections, the BJP made sure that our elected members are not able to work. On one hand, BJP doesn’t allow democratically elected institutions to work and on the other hand, it uses dirty tactics to put pressure on our elected members. They have been attempting to buy our members and this time they succeeded. People of Mehsana voted for the Congress and this is cheating… not only with the Congress but also with the public,” said Doshi.

Ghanshyam Solanki, president of Mehsana municipality, said that he was disoriented with the Congress due to its internal turmoil. “I have been a Congress worker for 30 years and a corporator for 20 years but I know how difficult it was for me to get elected as president last time. There is no command in the party and its own corporators keep delaying our efforts to work. I have joined the BJP since it is a disciplined party,” said Solanki.