On a sultry July afternoon in 2015, a mob of furious Patidar youths barged into the house of a BJP MLA in the northern Gujarat town of Visnagar, set his car on fire and ransacked his house. The coals left by the arsonists sparked a massive reservation protest in the state and led to the rise of a 22-year-old Patidar leader from Saurashtra who dominated the political mind for the next few years.
Till that time, Hardik Patel was a non-entity, hardly known and recognized. A commerce graduate whose father worked at small submersible pumps in Viramgam on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Hardik had no political background or godfather.
After a few months and 17 FIRs, Hardik managed to get the politically important Patidar community involved in a statewide agitation demanding reservation for the group in the OBC community.
The defining moment of the movement came on August 15, 2015 when he organized one of the biggest reservation rallies in Ahmedabad. The day-long protest ended in violent clashes, in which over a dozen people were killed and Hardik was jailed.
Along with the BJP government accusing Hardik of harassing Hardik, the Anandiben Patel government kept registering other cases including sedition against Hardik. But by that time, 22-year-old Patidar had managed to lead the political chorus in the state. His rise coincided with a raging tension between Anandiben Patel and the then BJP president Amit Shah. The state government was under pressure due to the escalating agitation and Anandiben loyalists feared that a “heartfelt incident” was being fueled from within the party.
In August 2016, Anandiben took to Facebook to announce her resignation – the first casualty of Hardik’s agitation against the establishment. The Patidar movement continued to grow and Hardik continued to gain popularity not only in his stronghold Saurashtra but also among Patidar-dominated groups in north and south Gujarat. He formed the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) which took a central place in Gujarat politics.
Though Hardik vowed to remain politically neutral, it was hard to recall his leanings towards the Congress ahead of the 2017 state assembly elections. His rallies were specifically targeted against the BJP government in the Saurashtra region. Sensing undercurrents against the party in the past few months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually took over the campaign, the BJP managed to scrape away.
Hardik had hoped to take the Congress home, but the numbers fell short as Modi managed to secure his home turf. The defeat left Hardik at the crossroads. With internal strife and quitting with old allies, Hardik decided to join Congress in 2019. For the man who had risen to fame immediately, the sluggish scheme of things within Congress soon began to make him uncomfortable.
It can be said that 2022 could be another crucial year for 28-year-old Hardik, amid reports of a shift towards the BJP ahead of the crucial Gujarat elections in a few months.
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