New Delhi: Infighting in the state units might be pushing some young leaders away from Congress. The issue is once again in focus over reports that Gujarat working president Hardik Patel, who has been miffed over ill-treatment by the senior state leaders, might be moving towards the BJP. If he ends up with the ruling party in the state, it would certainly be a jolt to the opposition party.
Hardik, 28, shot to fame by leading a Patel quota movement in the western state in 2015 and later joined the Congress in the presence of Rahul Gandhi in March 2019. The Patidar leader had praised Rahul Gandhi, saying the then Congress president was "honest". "People ask me why I chose the Congress and Rahul Gandhi. I chose Rahul Gandhi because he is honest. He does not believe in working like a dictator," Hardik had said. He had backed the Congress in the 2017 Gujarat assembly elections in which the party gave a stiff competition to the BJP, winning 81 out of 182 assembly seats.
In July 2019, former Congress legislators Alpesh Thakor and his close aide Dhavalsinh Zala quit the party and joined the BJP in Gujarat. Alpesh, 43, had emerged as a prominent Other Backward Caste leaders after the Patel quota agitation in 2015. He had formed the Thakor Sena, an outfit of his OBC Thakor caste.
Thakor had resigned from all posts in the Congress in April, just before the Lok Sabha elections in the state, where the BJP won all the 26 parliamentary seats for the second time in a row. However, he continued as a legislator. "I joined because I trusted Rahul Gandhi, but unfortunately he couldn't do anything. I came to work for the poor and the destitute and I couldn't do any of it by being here for the past one-and-a-half-year," he had said.
Zala, who was elected from Bayad in Sabarkantha district in the 2017 assembly polls, had said, "We were humiliated over and over again. The big leaders of the party would never listen to the small ones. Because of these reasons, I have resigned from my position." Apart from Gujarat, similar discontent has been reported from other states where the young leaders considered close to Rahul Gandhi chose to leave the grand old party.
Former Lok Sabha member from Silchar in Assam and ex-All-India Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev, moved to the Trinamool Congress last year. Before Dev, other young leaders who joined the BJP are Jitin Prasada in Uttar Pradesh and Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh while Pradyot Manikya Deb Barman in Tripura floated his own outfit.
Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan was on the verge of leaving the Congress in 2020 and can safely be included in the list of such young leaders. Unfortunately, factional fights and an equally ambitious layer of veterans at the top in the states slowed down the growth of these young leaders, added to their anxiety, and forced them to jump ship.
Read: Hardik Patel joining BJP? His Twitter bio no more reads 'working president of Gujarat Congress'
