Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel on Monday cancelled a rally he was scheduled to address in Gujarat’s Rajkot as the crisis over the electoral tie-up with the Congress intensified, PTI reported.
The two parties clashed on Sunday night after the Congress announced its first list of 77 candidates for the Gujarat Assembly elections, leaving only three seats for the Patidar outfit. Hours earlier, the two sides had said they had come to an understanding. The Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti is believed to have sought 20 seats.
The Congress party’s decision has divided the Hardik Patel-led group, with Lalit Vasoya – one of the three given a Congress ticket – filing nomination papers as a candidate for the party from Dhroaji, NDTV reported. Vasoya’s decision came even though the group’s spokesperson Dinesh Bhambhania said none of the leaders had asked to contest the elections.
The other two Patidar leaders given seats by the Congress are Nilesh Patel and Anil Thummar.
In an apparent response to the developments, Hardik Patel tweeted lines from a poem penned by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, asking his supporters to stay united and walk hand-in-hand, though “clouds of doom may hang overhead and embers burn your feet”.
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