Idyllic and pristine, Union Territory of Lakshadweep—an archipelago of 36 islands in the Indian Ocean—has seen its share of storms, but not like the one currently whipped up by its administrator, Praful Khodabhai Patel.
The UT is suddenly hitting the headlines due to a series of controversial changes brought in by Patel, which ignited a firestorm of protests from Kerala to Delhi.
The fact that Patel has managed to rouse the fury of locals and expose the island to the messy socio-political convulsions that haunt Indian cities doesn’t surprise those who have followed his career.
Controversy and trouble seem to shadow the “low profile” and “strict” Patel, who almost three months ago was booked for allegedly abetting the suicide of Mohan Delkar, a seven-time MP and popular tribal leader of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Hailing from Himatnagar in Sabarkantha district in north Gujarat, 64-year-old Patel started his career as an additional assistant engineer in the Gujarat government. He took voluntary retirement and served as personal secretary to minister, Dilip Patel, from 1995 to 2000 in the first BJP government in the state. His father Khodabhai Patel was an active RSS member and was closely associated with Narendra Modi.
Patel is said to have come in contact with Modi back in the mid-1990s as a party worker. Since then their bond only grew stronger.
In 2007, Patel was asked to contest the Assembly election from Himatnagar, where he was running a construction firm, Sabar Construction.
The 2007 Assembly election was crucial for the then chief minister Narendra Modi as it was the first election after the 2002 riots.
Patel won the polls, and so did the BJP under Modi’s leadership. In 2010, the CBI arrested Amit Shah, a day after he tendered his resignation as a minister of state for home and surrendered to the agency in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. BJP leaders were surprised to see Modi handpicking Patel, a novice, to replace Shah.
In September 2013, Patel hit the headlines again as the CBI grilled him in the Ishrat Jahan case after he was found to be part of a meeting held with police officers, legal heads, bureaucrats, and politicians to discuss how to derail the probe.
During his two-year tenure, Patel kept a low profile. He lost the 2012 Assembly poll. That didn’t hurt Patel much as in 2016 the Modi government appointed Patel as the administrator of Union Territory Daman and Diu and later Dadra and Nagar Haveli, a post usually occupied by IAS officers. Both the UTs, bordering Gujarat, were merged in 2020.
People across the UTs describe him as a person with “authoritative” traits, who has made governance so “centralised” that even a gram panchayat can’t act on its own.
His supporters say after taking over, Patel brought “law and order, curbed large scale liquor smuggling into Gujarat by distilleries” as well as “extortion rackets” which allegedly used to target industrialists.
Umesh Patel, a local leader in Daman, admits that Patel “brought many changes, but they are limited to urban centres”. “The rural area is still under neglect,” he says. “Earlier, anyone could participate in tendering and other business opportunities, but now only a few big names are getting all the benefits. He removed hundreds of families of fishermen living (reportedly illegally) on seasides for generations and turned it into tourist attractions.”
In 2020, Patel got control of Lakshadweep. Soon, trouble erupted on the island. The controversy revolves around the draft Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation 2021 (LDAR). Some of the controversial provisions in the proposed draft relate to powers for the removal or relocation of islanders from their property for developmental activity, opening of liquor shops on the islands dominated by Muslims, panchayat regulation that bars people with more than two kids from contesting polls, possible ban on of beef and scrapping of non-vegetarian meals from the mid-day meals.
A BJP leader in Diu, who visited the island recently, told DH, “I don’t think locals will protest against much of the proposed laws except against beef, as it is their staple food.”
But Patel’s track record hardly inspires confidence, if one goes by his detractors’ claims.
“There is no doubt that he is a very strict administrator, but you will have to give him credit for the fact that he is developing the UTs like never before, and he will do so in Lakshadweep as well. No one can bring development without being strict,” said a BJP leader in Ahmedabad, preferring anonymity.
Patel “enjoys power” due to his proximity to Modi, say people who know him. It seems, no amount of public pressure can force Patel to backtrack except Modi himself.
That means the forecast for Lakshadweep and beyond will remain: stormy days ahead.
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