Gandhinagar : With the ”Patidar” millstone refusing to let go of its neck, the Anandiben Patel government in Gujarat is flailing for a solution to the vexed problem even as their agitation shows signs of revival. While chief minister Anandiben Patel and some of her cabinet colleagues held a meeting with a ”section” of the Patel leaders in a bid for a ”face-saver” solution, jailed Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel poured salt on sore wounds charging the BJP with resorting to the age-old British Raj policy of communal cleavage and sectarian violence. The knife-twisting charges came in a letter he addressed to the chief minister from captivity even as she and her confidants were trying to work out a ”respectable” give and take for withdrawing cases against the agitating Patel leaders.
More than eighty Patel leaders, largely youth are behind bars under a variety of charges that range from the serious to the frivolous. While 22-year-old Hardik Patel and a dozen others find themselves in jail on charges of sedition, numerous others are there for mobbing, assault, damage to public property and even holding meetings without seeking permission. All this while ministers and BJP leaders are facing the might of the Patidar wrath as they try to attend public functions and are forced to retreat. The matter has escalated ever since the Congress opposition acquired newly found clout after the recently concluded local self-government body elections. The opposition recently held a day-long agitation in support of the incarcerated Patel leaders demanding their release.
Meanwhile, Haridk Patel in his letter to the chief minister, a copy of which has been sent to state BJP chief R C Fardu, sought to enlarge the scope of their pro-reservation stir stating that the Patidar community agitation was not just limited to demands for reservations but touched on a wider arc to include gender disparities and the mounting discrimination between the rich and the poor.
He has also urged his supporters to give up the fast for his release. Hardik hit back at the chief minister for her comments denigrating the very community to which she herself belonged and pointed out that the BJP has come to power with the support of Patel money and manpower and having done so her government had killed ten Patels and jailed hundreds of others. ”You would be deluding yourself if you think you will be in power for long. We are neither in the pocket of the BJP nor agents of the Congress. We are duty bound to throw out all those who have betrayed the community even as you continue with your baser politics playing the upper castes against the lower castes and Hindus against Muslims”, the letter added. Patel made it clear that the government needs to realize that the pro-quota agitation was a direct reaction to the growing unemployment and mounting agricultural stress. “Farmers are committing commit suicide, education costs are going out of pocket and general poverty is on the upswing. The reservation agitation is a direction reaction to it”, the letter noted.
Hardik”s utterances found reaction when the patidar community registered its protest by pulling back its children from schools as the Gujarat government began its biggest exercise called ”gunotsav”,an annual exercise to assess the quality of primary education in the state. This was not a phenomenon restricted only to Surat where the Patel leader is jailed but found echoes statewide.
