Congress in fight with Toor King to reclaim its bastion Anand

To the rest of the world, it is known as the cradle of India’s White Revolution. The BJP has striven to saffronize this NRG-rich belt of Central

Gujarat

— Charotar — represented by the twin districts of Anand and Kheda. Since 1995, when the saffron surge brought the BJP to power in Gujarat, the Anand

Lok Sabha

seat has voted in six elections, four won by the Congress.

Only the Atal wave in 1999 and the Modi wave in 2014 could dislodge Congress MPs. In 2014, the BJP’s Dilip Patel beat the Congress’s sitting MP and Union minister, Bharatsinh Solanki, by 63,000 votes. The junior Solanki is the son of Madhavsinh Solanki, who rose on this land to become the Gujarat chief minster with his famous social engineering formula, KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim).

Bharatsinh Solanki too had all the caste combinations in his favour. Solanki, a former Gujarat Congress president, is expecting to wrest his seat back and thinks that odds are in his favour because the BJP has fielded Mitesh Patel (Bako), an electoral rookie. Bako has managed his family-owned toor daal business for a couple of decades. BJP sources said that he was picked to avoid factionalism.

atels have sided with the BJP since the days of KHAM. But Patels are just 17% of the population. Kshatriyas (including OBCs and Thakors) are in sizable numbers. Muslim voters (12%) usually veer towards the Congress. Support for the BJP could come from the NRG factor. Kheda and Anand account for nearly 60,000 NRGs across the globe — most are Modi supporters. Many NRGs believe that Sardar Patel, India’s first deputy Prime Minister with roots in Charotar, would have been a better PM than Jawaharlal Nehru.

Now that Modi has delivered the world’s tallest statue — the Statue of Unity — at Kevadiya colony in Narmada, most NRGs are convinced that only NaMo can be the PM who performs. In fact, a group of NRGs recently organized a ‘havan’ at Borsad town praying for Modi’s victory.

As for problems, Anand does not have a district-level civil hospital or a proper depot for the state road transport system. And unemployment worries Anand’s youth. The region has flourished with agro-economy comprising a strong network of village dairy co-operatives that have remained in the control of Congress leaders who hold sway over the Amul Dairy’s board. But this time, the fight for rural votes will be close. The dairy’s chairman, Ramsinh Parmar has joined the BJP. The rest of the board is still with the Congress.

The BJP has sprung a surprise by not repeating the sitting MP, Dilip Patel alias Mani. Sources in the party said that local office-bearers were not happy with Patel’s style of functioning.