Congress sees rebellion in Gujarat BJP

The Congress is seeing signs of a farmers’ rebellion brewing in Gujarat, where BJP president Amit Shah faced the wrath of the restive Patidar community on Thursday evening at Surat. The revolt of the Patidars that forced both Shah and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani to cut short their speeches at the Surat event has boosted the morale of the Congress that is itching to make a comeback in the state where it has been out of power for two decades.

“This is a kind of a new revolution, a movement and a strong rebellion in Gujarat,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said here. Terming the turn of events as the breakdown of the “Gujarat model”, Singhvi reeled out statistics to back his claims of an agrarian crisis in the Prime Minister  home state.

However, there are doubts whether the Congress is in a position to reap dividends of the political situation in Gujarat. Hours before BJP’s Amit Shah was booed by the Patidars in Surat, prominent Gujarat Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil had resigned from all party responsibilities. This is considered as a clear indication that all was not well in the faction-ridden Gujarat Congress.

The Congress still has more than an year to recoup and make a serious claim to power in Gujarat which goes for polls in November 2017. Singhvi, meanwhile, sought to highlight the “resentment” among farmers in Gujarat. “Jobless growth in agriculture is the hallmark of this government,” he said contending that the state had witnessed negative growth in the farm sector between 2008 and 2013.