Congress confident of Patel's RS win; to weave assembly campaign around it

On the eve of the closely-fought Rajya Sabha election, Congress on Monday said it was confident of Ahmed Patel's victory and was even planning to spin the campaign of the year-end assembly polls around it.

“We are confident of Ahmed Patel's victory,” chief AICC spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said when asked about the Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat on Tuesday.

A senior Congress leader said that the party had even drawn up plans to make Patel's victory a centre point of the campaign for the assembly elections scheduled for December.

“We are thinking along the lines of 'we have won the Rajya Sabha, now it is the turn of the Gujarat assembly',” said the leader who is closely associated with the party's affairs in the state.

The Congress is banking on the unease in the Patidar community, which was a key supporter of the BJP, and the disillusioned textile industry unhappy with the rollout of the GST to wean away voters from the BJP.

The Congress has been out of power in Gujarat for the last 22 years and has pinned its hopes on winning the state as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah focus their energies on the national level.

A win for Ahmed Patel will infuse a fresh lease of life in Congress ahead of the assembly elections. Shah has already set a target of winning 150 seats in the 186-member assembly, while the Congress has witnessed desertions right from the top state leadership.

However, a senior leader admitted that a loss for Patel could demoralise the cadre across the country as he is the “go-to” person for Congress workers keen to meet the party President Sonia Gandhi.

The leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly Shankarsinh Vaghela quit the Congress last month following differences with the state leaders. Since his exit, six MLAs have quit the party amid reports that many more leaders were planning to follow suit.