Gujarat Congress MLA Ashwin Kotwal resigns ahead of polls, joins BJP

In a big setback to Gujarat Congress ahead of Assembly polls, its three-time MLA and tribal leader Ashwin Kotwal on Tuesday resigned as MLA and from the party. With Kotwal's resignation, Congress has lost a dozen MLAs since 2017, out of which the majority have joined the ruling BJP.

Kotwal, a three-time MLA from Khedbrahma in north Gujarat's Sabarkantha district, was reported to be sulking for the past several months following fresh appointments of office-bearers in which he is said to have been ignored. Party sources said that he wanted the post of leader of opposition in the assembly. However, the party chose Sukhram Rathva. Kotwal, an ex-chief whip, had stopped coming to Congress office since then.

Kotwal tendered his resignation to Gujarat Assembly speaker Nima Acharya in Gandhinagar within hours joined the BJP with his supporters at Kamlam, the party headquarters in Gandhinagar. "I became a bhakt of prime minister Modi saheb in 2007 itself. I won the elections thrice on Congress tickets but all this while Modi saheb was in my heart," he said after joining the party.

Kotwal had won the Khedbrahma seat, reserved for scheduled tribes, three times consecutively since 2007. The seat has been a Congress bastion for the past several decades. Kotwal donned the saffron scarf in presence of state BJP president C R Paatil and presented a bow and arrow as a symbol of people in the tribal region to Paatil.

Kotwal's presence in the BJP is likely to help the party struggling to pacify tribal communities, especially in south Gujarat, who have been in agitation over several issues including Par-Tapi-Narmada river-linking project, land acquisition among other developmental projects.

Meanwhile, the defection of Kotwal has once again brought the faultline in the Congress ahead of upcoming Assembly polls. Over the last four-and-a-half-year, since it gave the BJP its biggest scare in the state by restricting them to 99 seats, Congress has lost over a dozen legislators to BJP. The continuous defections and subsequent defeats in by-polls have reduced Congress' tally in the Assembly to 64 from 77 seats which the party had won back then. Meanwhile, the BJP increased its tally to 112 in the house of 182 seats

Some of the prominent defectors include OBC leader Alpesh Thakor who was part of the troika of Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani, who together had given momentus to the Congress poll campaign in 2017. They had restricted the BJP to 99 seats, the worst tally for the ruling party ever since they came to power in 1995.

While the stature of Mevani is rising in the Congress as a prominent Dalit face, Hardik Patel is distancing himself from the party. Although the party elevated him to the post of working president in the state, Patel is said to have remained an outsider in the party.

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