Former Union home minister and Congress general secretary Sushil Kumar Shinde said the BJP used all dirty tricks to prevent Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel, from winning the Rajya Sabha elections from Gujarat but failed miserably. Patel got 44 votes and won the prestige fight—that saw him position against BJP president Amit Shah—by a whisker. Shah and Union minister Smriti Irani polled 46 votes each and got elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. Patel returned to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat for a fifth term. The Election Commission came to the rescue of Patel, after it held the votes of two Congress rebels invalid as they had showed their ballot papers to the BJP’s election agent.
Said Shinde to THE WEEK, “This is a government which is not interested in governing. It wants to simply fulfil its propaganda. The government’s new programmes were only renamed versions of schemes launched by our government. The government has totally failed to revive the economy. Its foreign policy is inconsistent.”
Shinde said Patel’s victory in the Rajya Sabha elections should be an eye-opener for the BJP. “The BJP should stop misusing power at least now and shed its arrogance. It should not ruin democratic practices,” said Shinde. When asked if the Congress could win the assembly elections in Gujarat later this year, Shinde said it was too early to say that. “The BJP is a strong force in Gujarat. Let us see. We need to work hard to defeat the BJP,” he said.
Said Ashok Gehlot, former Rajasthan CM and senior Congress leader, to THE WEEK, "What happened in Gujarat is a naked dance of vendetta politics. It is in the interest of the nation for the Congress to win the assembly elections in Gujarat."
