Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel on Friday said he did not consider Congress President Rahul Gandhi his leader. “I like Rahul Gandhi at a personal level, but I do not consider him as a leader because he is not my leader,” PTI quoted him as saying. He added that the Congress chief’s sister Priyanka Gandhi should join politics.

The Patidar leader, though not a formal ally of the Congress, had worked with the party during the Gujarat elections in 2017. Patel said he was happy to see “the full strength of the Congress representatives in the Gujarat Assembly”. The party won 77 seats in the 182-member House in December. “Now, they [the Congress] are raising the voice of the people of Gujarat confidently,” Patel said.

Patel added that he would not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. “I think it is more important to feel the pulse of the people, whom I would represent in the Assembly or Parliament,” he said, according to PTI. “First, I want to understand everything and most importantly, what the public wants and deserves.”