News Analysis | Gujarat BJP eyes community dividend with Patel poster boy’s induction

Jury still out on Hardik as a swing factor as erstwhile supporters question Patidar quota agitation leader’s politics ahead of shift to the ruling party in Gujarat on June 2

The poster boy and face of the 2015 Patidar quota agitation, Hardik Patel, who had challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the run-up to the last Assembly elections in Gujarat, is set to join the party ahead of the next State polls scheduled to be held in December this year.

Mr. Patel will be inducted into the BJP on June 2 by Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and the party’s State unit chief C.R. Paatil, Gujarat BJP spokesperson Yagnesh Dave said.

The 28-year-old leader resigned from the Congress, where he was working president of the State unit for a year. He had joined the Opposition party in the run-up to the 2019 parliamentary polls.

While resigning from the Congress, Mr. Hardik Patel had said that the party’s leadership was “highly communal, anti-Hindu and anti-Gujarati”, in a clear indication that the BJP would be his next destination. He spent nearly nine months in jail as the State’s BJP government had filed two sedition cases against him and his aides following the Patidar agitation in 2015.

Patidar outreach

His joining the BJP in Gujarat ahead of the Assembly polls brings Mr. Hardik Patel and the politics around the quota agitation to a full circle as, from 2015 onwards, he was seen as one of the key faces to take on the BJP in its strongest bastion, Gujarat, while the agitation was one of the toughest challenges for the ruling party in the State.

With his entry, the ruling party, which has been wooing Patidars since September 2021, when it abruptly shunted the then Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and his entire Cabinet and installed political novice Mr. Bhupendra Patel as CM, feels that the community will consolidate behind it in the 2022 State polls.