Hardik Patel had joined the Congress in 2019, just before the Lok Sabha elections.
New Delhi:
After days of anger, Gujarat leader Hardik Patel today quit the Congress and left with a resignation letter to Rahul Gandhi, who had brought him to the party in 2019. Top leaders were “distracted by their mobile phones” and the Gujarat Congress was more interested in ensuring that. “Chicken sandwich” for them, he said in a parting shot that is very embarrassing, right after the party’s revival strategy meeting.
It is a major defeat for the Congress in Gujarat, where elections are due later this year. Sources said the high-profile Patidar leader has been in touch with the BJP leadership for the past two months and is likely to join the ruling party within a week. Hardik Patel has so far vehemently denied the Congress-to-BJP transition that many leaders have made in the last two years.
Hardik Patel’s resignation letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi came under attack from several people who did not meet him separately during his recent Gujarat visit. “When I met top leaders, they seemed distracted by their mobile phones and other issues instead of listening to issues related to Gujarat,” he said.
He wrote, “Senior leaders in Gujarat are more interested in ensuring that visiting leaders get their chicken sandwiches than in engaging with people during the yatra.”
Hardik Patel further said, “Our leaders were abroad when they were needed in India during critical times,” slamming Rahul Gandhi by critics including the ruling BJP.
Hardik Patel was the working president of the Congress in Gujarat, a position he said was of no importance to him during his tenure.
He said the Congress leadership “totally dislikes Gujarat and has no interest in the state”, adding that the party has been “rejected in almost every state because they have no roadmap to present to the people”. Not there.”
He said that the politics of the Congress party is limited only to opposing everything that the government does. He said the party has come under “obstacle” in resolving key issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Goods and Services Tax, the Ayodhya temple-mosque case and Article 370 (abolition of the constitutional provision giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir). ,
Patidar workers joined the Congress just before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He was made the working president of the Congress in Gujarat, a position he said meant little during his years in the party as he was never a part of decision-making.
He had been complaining for the past few weeks that the Gujarat Congress leadership had sidelined him and compared it to the feeling of “forcing the groom. vasectomy (Vasectomy)”.
When Rahul Gandhi visited Gujarat earlier this month, the much-anticipated meeting between the two did not materialise.
Hardik Patel had told NDTV last week, “He was in Gujarat recently, but I think he was very busy. He will come back to me once he is free.”