Ahmedabad: Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) convenor Hardik Patel on Thursday declared his support for Congress in the Gujarat Assembly election. He said that the party is openly supporting Patidars.
It may be mentioned that since last few days, he was demanding the party to clarify its position on quotas for Patels.
According to the report published in NDTV, he said that he has been asking his community to vote BJP out of power. When questioned whether this means he will ask people to vote Congress, he replied, “People are intelligent”
Rejecting the allegations of “sellout”, he said that the other Patel group does not represent Patidars.
It may be noted that Hardik Patel is getting huge support. Many youths are attending his rallies. However, few Patel groups are against him and accused him of taking political mileage by using reservation issue. They alleged that Mr. Hardik declared support for Congress despite party did not accept his demand to include Patel in OBC list.
So far, opposition party promised to give 20% reservation to economically backward classes among Patel by amending Constitution, NDTV reported.
The group opposing Hardik Patel claimed that BJP offered the same but he rejected it.
During the last few months, Congress tried to get support from Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakore who represent the Patidar Community.
The Congress is counting on the Patidar votes to sway the election results of Gujarat polls in their favour and uproot the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 1995 in the state.
The polls will be conducted in Gujarat in two phases – December 9 and December 14. The counting of the votes will be held on December 18.