Ahmedabad: In its attempt to expand its footprints in Gujarat after the huge Punjab success, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal on Monday decided on an electoral alliance with veteran Adivasi leader Chhotubhai Vasava’s Bharatiya Tribal Party.
The alliance was decided at a meeting in New Delhi between Kejriwal and Mahesh Vasava, BTP chief and son of Chhotubhai, and Gujarat AAP leader Isudan Gadhvi and others.
Mahesh Vasava was also taken to government schools in Delhi and mohalla clinics run by the AAP. Vasava later said such schools were the need of the hour in tribal regions of Gujarat.
Confirming the development, Vasava said, “We (BTP and AAP) have decided on an alliance and the AAP would include all pending demands of the tribals in South Gujarat in the election manifesto.” Sources said the BTP might contest on all 27 Scheduled Tribe reserved seats in Gujarat.
While the AAP only stands to gain from this alliance since it does not have any presence in any of the regions, this development is yet another shocker for the Congress party, which is leading the tribal agitation against the Par-Tapi-Narmada Riverlinking Project and is support among the Adivasis in South Gujarat, where the project is being planned.
Though BTP founder Chhotubhai Vasava and Mahesh Vasava are the only two MLAs of BTP, they have considerable influence in South Gujarat and would majorly cut into the Congress votes in the tribal seats. The Congress had contested the 2017 assembly elections in an alliance with the BTP and won 15 out of 27 ST seats.
But they later fell apart and in the June 2020 Rajya Sabha elections for some seats in Gujarat, both the BTP MLAs abstained from voting stating that their party is an independent outfit which keeps a distance from both the BJP and Congress. It might be recalled that it was Chhotubhai Vasava’s singular vote had ensured Congress veteran, the late Ahmed Patel’s victory in the 2017 polls for the upper house.
Last year, the BTP had decided to sever ties with the Congress in Narmada and Bharuch district panchayats, and joined hands with the AIMIM for the local body polls in February 2021. This was after Vasava’s party had to suffer a setback in a district panchayat election in Rajasthan when local Congress leaders ganged up with the BJP to keep the BTP out of power.
