Congress to protest if cases against Patel leaders not withdrawn: Bharatsinh Solanki

The opposition Congress in Gujarat, which made an impressive comeback in the panchayat polls held last month, today demanded that government withdraw the criminal cases filed against Hardik Patel and other leaders of the Patel quota agitation and release them.

"We are asking the government to take back the cases against Patel youths. Else, we will launch a statewide protest," Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki said.

Siddarah Patel, another Congress leader, said the BJP government had slapped "wild charges" like sedition against the Patel leaders. Thousands of youths were charged with rioting, while hundreds were in jail and many of them had been barred from entering their native districts, he added.

"If the government doesn't take the cases back and release all of them, we will have no option but to launch an agitation," Patel said.

In the local bodies elections which followed agitation of the Patel community for reservations in the OBC category, Congress won 21 of the 31 district panchayats and 124 out of 230 taluka panchayats. BJP won in all the six municipal corporations and 40 out of the 56 municipalities.

The opposition party seemed to have gained because of the the state government's tough stand on quota agitation.

"We have had an empathetic win. We have won district and taluka panchayats in large numbers, and in municipal corporations and municipalities our vote share has increased," Solanki said.

"The BJP is trying to project that it had a great win.... The difference between vote shares of the two parties has decreased by about 10 per cent in the urban areas too," he said.

Siddarth Patel claimed that in 2010 Ahmedabad corporation election, Congress got 33.73 per cent votes and this time it got 42.18 per cent, while BJP's share fell from 54.55 to 50.47 percent. The same pattern can be observed in other cities, he added.