Hardik Patel whisked away after he insists on CM Anandiben personally coming to the rally venue to accept their charter of demands, which includes OBC quota for his community .
Gandhinagar : It was all fire and brimstone: Patidars gathered from all over Gujarat and flexed their political biceps in a massive show of strength in Ahmedabad on Tuesday to buttress their demand for reservation in the OBC category. But it appears the leaders have bitten off more than they could chew with cracks emerging in their seemingly solid edifice soon after.
“Only if our demands are met will the lotus bloom in the 2017 Assembly elections in Gujarat, or else never again,” thundered Hardik Patel, the youthful convenor of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS).
Speaking in Hindi, the man of the moment, Hardik, said, “We may be 1.80 crore in Gujarat but nationally we are 27 crore. Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar is from our community as is Chandrababu Naidu, the Andhra Pradesh CM; besides we have 117 Patidar members in Parliament. This shows our strength and reach,” he added.
He was quick to point out that the Gujjars of Rajasthan, who had locked horns with their government over reservation benefits, had also extended them support. We are prepared to go to Gandhinagar and to Jantar Mantar in New Delhi if our demands are not met,” he threatened, addressing what from the height of the dais seemed like a mass of humanity.
As night descended, the crowd petered out and the police whisked away the fast- ing five, bringing the curtains down on a day of high drama and heightened tension.
Earlier, a mollycoddling Anandiben Patel government, enthralled by the rapidly spreading reservation agitation, had virtually rolled out the red carpet for the agitating Patidars. As they descended on Ahmedabad from all four corners of the state in droves, the government waIved off the toll tax for all vehicles en route and made available it’s GMDC ground for free. A 7-member ministerial sub-group had been set up in the last few days to negotiate with the agitation leader who kept on raising the bar of their demands even as the government desperately sought to find a way out of the impasse.
Young Hardik, in a sudden about turn, deviated from what had been agreed upon and abruptly announced in the course of his muscle-flexing speech that unless the chief minister personally came to the venue to accept the Patidar demand charter, he would not budge and instead go on fast along with the others.
This departure from the prepared script set the cats amongst the pigeons. The chief minister, who went into an emergency huddle along with some of her cabinet colleagues, officials and advisers in the state capital, decided to harden the government stand and made it known that this was not to be. By nightfall the crowd had dispersed and Hardik, along with four other fasting leaders, were left with a few thousand people in attendance. Later in the night the police, which had been exercising legendary patience despite stray incidents of violence in some parts of the city, swooped down and whisked away Hardik to an unidentified destination.
But the young leader’s detention late in the evening led to an immediate backlash, as protesters gathered in large numbers at various cross-roads and attacked the police, pelted stones and set on fire public properties including buses at two places. Protesters also tried to torch the house of Gujarat minister of state of home Rajni Patel in Mehsana, police said, adding that the fire did not cause much damage. Hardik was hastily released by the police seeing the mood
of the community members. “The attack (by police) on us and media was political. The way police had beaten us, including the women and children present at the GMDC ground venue, was not right,” Hardik Patel told media after his release.
