Ahmedabad: Contrary to his assertions at various meetings with the party’s rank and file across the State for the last over a fortnight, Gujarat BJP president CR Paatil has given a go-ahead to two aspirants, turncoat Alpesh Thakor and sitting MLA Dilip Thakor, for tickets to contest the upcoming assembly elections.
CR Paatil has been curtly asking party leaders and workers not to come to him for recommendations for the election tickets since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will decide all the contestants, after it passes through the central parliamentary board.
But during a tour to North Gujarat, he cleared the candidature of Alpesh Thakor, who had quit the Congress to join the BJP in 2019, from Radhanpur constituency and sitting MLA Dilip Thakor from Chanasma in Patan district.
He told local mediapersons in Patan on Thursday that, "Everyone in the party knows that the parliamentary board, and the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister, take the final call, but Alpesh Thakor is our senior party leader and he will contest from his Radhanpur constituency and we are confident that he will win, we wish him all the best. The same about Dilip Thakor."
In fact, on Monday, addressing a public meeting in Radhanpur, Alpesh announced he would contest the Assembly elections and exhorted the Thakor community and the people to back him whole-heartedly.
Reminding the public that he had lost the 2019 by-election to the same seat on a BJP seat after winning it from Congress, Thakor asked them to ensure this was not repeated this time.
Notwithstanding this, several local Thakor leaders are dead against Alpesh’s nomination from Radhanpur constituency. The prominent among them is Lavingji Thakor, who has already given a slogan to the people there that, "Only a local person will win elections and a ‘migrant’ will be defeated." This is aimed at Alpesh, who had quit the Congress to join the BJP though the opposition party gave him a ticket and won, however, lost from the same seat on a BJP ticket in 2019 by-poll.
