New Delhi : Senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi is set to enter the Gujarat poll campaign for the first time and will take on PM Modi in his home state on April 27 when she will address a rally in support of party’s Valsad candidate Anant Patel.
“Priyanka Gandhi will address a rally in Valsad on April 27. It is a Tribal hub. Our candidate Anant Patel has a strong chance of winning the seat,” AICC secretary in charge of Gujarat BM Sandeep Kumar told ETV Bharat.
Gujarat has 26 Lok Sabha seats. As the BJP candidate in Surat Mukesh Dalal has been declared elected unopposed, polling in the remaining 25 seats will be held on May 7. The result would be out on June 4.
The Congress has blamed the BJP for the rejection of nomination of the grand old party’s Surat candidate Nilesh Kumbhani, who is missing over the past few days amidst reports that he may join the BJP. The other four independent candidates in Surat had also withdrawn from the contest paving the way for the BJP nominee.
Priyanka’s visit comes in the backdrop of the Surat fiasco which has been dubbed by the party as ‘murder of democracy’ by the BJP. Party leaders now expect her to take on PM Modi in his home state a day after she hit back at PM’s ‘Mangalsootra’ jibe on April 23.
The PM had alleged that the Congress would even take the ‘Mangalsootra’ of women to redistribute wealth to the poor. To this Priyanka hit back saying her mother Sonia Gandhi’s ‘Mangalsootra’ had been sacrificed for the country, a reference to her late father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991.
“She is certainly going to take on the PM and the BJP in her Valsad rally. What the BJP did in Surat is like stealing the mandate,” said Sandeep Kumar.
In the previous national polls in 2014 and 2019, the BJP had won all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat. After losing the 2022 assembly polls, the Congress-AAP alliance is trying hard to stop the saffron party from performing a hattrick.
The Congress is contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat in alliance with the AAP, which is fighting on two seats Bhavnagar and Bharuch. The Congress is fighting 24 seats.
The party managers chose Valsad as Priyanka’s first campaign stop as the area is a Tribal hub and Congress candidate Anant Patel is a second term sitting MLA.
Ahead of the 2022 assembly polls, Anant Patel led a protest movement against the Par-Narmada-Tapi river-linking project which was later put on hold by the Centre.
Through Valsad, the Congress managers hope to send a message to the crucial 15 percent Tribal votes which influence around 35-40 assembly seats in the western state.
Besides the Tribal factor, the Congress is also hopeful that the prevailing anger among the four percent Rajput community against the BJP will help it win a few seats.
“The Rajputs may not be in big numbers but they carry influence. This time they are angry with the BJP over the controversial comments made by party leader P Rupala. Though Rupala has issued an apology, the Rajputs have not forgotten their insult,” Congress Working Committee member and senior Gujarat leader Jagdish Thakor told ETV Bharat.
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