Solanki supporters want Patel removed

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD, JUNE 18. A possible showdown between the two factions of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress(I) has been avoided for now, following the intervention of the party high command.

The members of the factions have cited the death of the senior party leader and working committee member, Rajesh Pilot, as the reason for postponing their meetings but in reality it is to give more time to the high command to sort out the differences.

While the faction led by the veteran party leader and the former AICC(I) general secretary, Mr. Madhavsinh Solanki, was due to meet in Gandhinagar tomorrow, the group supporting the Pradesh Congress(I) president, Mr. C.D. Patel, had planned a get- together a few kilometres away at Prantij in the neighbouring Sabarkantha district.

The Patel faction, which also includes the leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, Mr. Amarsinh Chaudhary, however, denied that it was a parallel meeting and maintained that the Prantij get-together was only to censure the BJP Government in the State for its alleged failure to handle the prevailing drought.

Apparently, it was aimed at demonstrating its strength in view of the meeting convened earlier by the Solanki faction to discuss its future course of action to press their demand for a change in the State leadership.

The Prantij meeting was seemingly aimed at thwarting the high command's reported decision to replace Mr. C. D. Patel with a Kshatriya leader ahead of the organisational elections scheduled later this year. But at the instance of the AICC(I) Secretary in- charge of Gujarat Affairs, Ms. Prabha Rao, the meeting has been postponed indefinitely. The Solanki faction has rescheduled its meeting for June 24 after the former External Affairs Minister returned from his visit to Bihar as a member of the high command team to review the party's support to the Rabri Devi Ministry.

The relations between Mr. Solanki and the C. D. Patel- Chaudhary faction had never been cordial but it reached a new low as Mr. Solanki was denied a third term in the Rajya Sabha in April at the instance of Mr. Chaudhary and his supporters. A majority of the party MLAs had threatened to vote against the official nominee, if Mr. Solanki was re-nominated at the expiry of his second term in the Upper House.

The Solanki supporters, who by and large were lying low when their leader was away in Delhi for more than decade, started regrouping ever since he returned to his private house in Gandhinagar in April. The continuous decline of the Congress(I) in the State in the last few elections under Mr. Patel's leadership has helped the Solanki faction to press their demand for a change, particularly to replace the present incumbent with a Kshatriya leader. The faction is of the view that the Congress(I) prospects could best be served by a Kshatriya leader, since both the upper caste ``Patels'' and the socially and educationally backward classes, to which Mr. C.D. Patel belonged, had traditionally sided with the BJP.

Meanwhile, the factional fight in the ruling BJP has also heightened with the withdrawal of the resignation by the Minister of State for Home, Mr. Haren Pandya, and the Deputy Labour and Employment Minister, Mr. Purshottam Solanki, describing the entire episode as a ``political drama''.

The Deputy Minister, in the eye of a storm in the recent ``cable war'' episode that led to Mr. Pandya's resignation, returned to his Ministerial office with the release on bail of his brother, Mr. Bharat Solanki. He did not take kindly to Mr. Pandya's resignation and his subsequent withdrawal stating that Mr. Pandya had embarrassed the Chief Minister, Mr. Keshubhai Patel.

He said he too was with Mr. Pandya to fight against criminalisation of politics but failed to understand who Mr. Pandya termed as the ``anti-social elements'' polluting the political atmosphere.

``Certainly my 81 innocent Koli supporters falsely implicated for attempted murder cases cannot be described as anti-social elements,'' he said.

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