BJP gangs up against Ahmed Patel, promises to fight Gujarat RS polls tooth and nail

The BJP is confident of defeating Congress leader Ahmed Patel in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections on Tuesday.

Ahmedabad, August 8: Things are not looking good for senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel, who is fighting one of his toughest electoral battles in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections slated on Tuesday.

The leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have already predicted Patel's defeat as they are confident of their victory in all the three Rajya Sabha seats up for grabs on Tuesday's elections.

Short of sounding the war bugle, the BJP promises to fight tooth and nail to ensure Patel's defeat in the elections.

"The BJP is confident of victory on all seats for the simple fact that the BJP has numbers and we have already seen that the Congress is a divided house. We will fight the election tooth and nail, constitutionally and legally under the aegis of the Election Commission of India (ECI)," BJP leader Sudesh Verma told ANI.

Verma added that the Congress cannot blame the BJP for division within its own house. "The Congress party has to look inward and find out the problem of leadership."

The BJP is sure that the Congress' ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), too will vote against Patel. BJP's national spokesman GVL Narasimha Rao appealed to all political parties to select the candidature on merit.

"It is natural for the other political parties like the NCP not to support the Congress candidate. We certainly appeal to all political parties to select our candidature on merit and as far as the Congress is concerned, it has demonstrated to Gujarat and to the rest of the country that it will enact any drama to lure it MLAs to win one Rajya Sabha seat," said Rao.

Rao added that the six Gujarat Congress members of legislative assembly (MLAs) have joined the BJP ahead of the polls as they find the Congress to be unattractive and unappealing to the people of Gujarat.

On Monday, a day ahead of the elections, NCP leader Kandhal Jadeja said that his party will be backing the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Senior leader of the NCP, Majid Memom, too echoed similar views.

"If Praful Patelji has indeed said that our two NCP Gujarat MLAs will support the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls then it must be correct," Memom said.

Patel's opponent is the BJP's candidate Balwantsinh Rajput, who has recently deserted the Congress to join the saffron party.

In the 182-member Gujarat Assembly, the strength of the Congress has gone down to 51. The other two high profile BJP candidates contesting the Rajya Sabha polls from the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are BJP president Amit Shah and union minister Smriti Irani.

After the defection of six MLAs, the Congress recently flew down 44 of its MLAs to a resort in the suburbs of Bengaluru, Karnataka, to avoid further "poaching". However, on Monday, they came back to Gujarat to cast their votes for Tuesday polls.

The Congress MLAs alleged that they were offered Rs 15 crore each to join the BJP. The saffron party, on its part, denied the allegations and criticised the Congress for taking away the MLAs from their home state to Karnataka at a time when floods have created havoc in Gujarat.

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