When the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading in India in March, many journalists in Gujarat received a call from Ahmed Patel asking about their well-being and also that of their families.
“Hope you and your family are doing well. Do let me know in case any help is needed,” he said.
Even several Congress workers received a call from him. He personally called up a reputed hospital in Ahmedabad to book a room for his colleague, Rajya Sabha member Shaktisinh Gohil, who tested positive for COVID-19.
On Wednesday, when the nation lost Ahmed Patel to post-COVID-19 complications, for the Gujarat Congress, it is a loss that the party and its leaders cannot even imagine.
Ahmed Patel was the one-point contact person for the leaders and party workers from Gujarat. Ahmed Patel was accessible 24x7.
A three-time Lok Sabha member and five-time Rajya Sabha member, Ahmed Patel was a man who was in New Delhi but did not forget his roots in Gujarat and was ever ready to help Gujarat and raise concerns when it mattered.
He had friends across party lines and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and people of Ahmed Patel’s age called him 'Babubhai', a name he got from his native Piraman village in Bharuch district of Gujarat. There is a likelihood that he might be buried beside the graves of his parents in Piraman.
Not many know that Ahmed Patel was instrumental in running many gaushalas (cow shelters) in Gujarat. A Congress leader in Rajkot, Dr. Hemang Vasavda, recalled how during drought Ahmed Patel aided gaushalas and the way he stayed in Kutch during the killer earthquake of 2001 to guide the party workers.
Totally dedicated to the party without aspiring for any post and easily accessible is how former Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhwadia described Ahmed Patel. “We have lost a friend, philosopher and a guide,” he said.
Tributes came from the young working president of Gujarat Congress Hardik Patel as well. Hardik recalled how Ahmed Patel inspired him before he joined the party over two years ago. “I remember how he offered me mango ras and puri in peak summer in New Delhi when I went to meet him,” he recalled.
Hardik also said that when he was in jail, Ahmed Patel often called up his parents to comfort them and say that lawyers would be arranged for his case.
Ahmed Patel reaching out to party workers and meeting them personally during his visits to Gujarat in their good and bad times is something that the rank and file of Gujarat Congress is not able to forget.
The manner in which Ahmed Patel won the Rajya Sabha election from Gujarat in a nail-biter in mid-2017 strengthened the Congress and it put up a good show in the Assembly election later that year.
