Even as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is on a day’s visit to Ahmedabad on Monday, Patidar leader and working president of Gujarat Congress Hardik Patel has termed as malicious reports in a section of media about his joining the Aam Aadmi Party.
In a message, Patel has said that he is surprised by reports that he is to join AAP and become the face of the party in the Assembly election to be held in 2022.
Kejriwal on Monday announced that his party would contest in all Assembly seats in the state. Gujarat has 182 legislators.
Stating that the reports are malicious in intent, Patel alleged that these have been released at the behest of the BJP in order to create confusion among Congress supporters and the Patidar community.
He said that as the working president, he would continue to fulfil his responsibilities in Gujarat to ensure that the Congress comes to power in 2022.
Patel, who joined the Congress in March 2019 in the presence of party leader Rahul Gandhi, has at times felt suffocated in the party and there have been differences over the manner in which he and other Congress leaders function. However, nobody admits these differences on the record. A section of senior Congress leaders were also unhappy when Hardik Patel was appointed state unit’s working president last year.
Hardik Patel said that anyone joining the fight against “mis-governance” of the BJP is more than welcome in Gujarat, but it was the Congress that came very close to forming the government in the last Assembly election.
Patel pointed out that people of Gujarat have seen the performance of the Congress in neighbouring Rajasthan and Maharashtra. He hoped that people of the state would choose the Congress to form the government.
In his message, Patel also pointed out that he is the youngest working president of a state unit in the party’s history of over 130 years.
