Ahmedabad
\nPatel quota stir leader Hardik Patel has put forward a set of demands before the Congress, including an assurance about reservation for the Patidars in government jobs and educational institutions, as a condition for supporting the party in the Gujarat Assembly polls.<\/p>\n
Sources in the Congress party said Patel sought a maximum number of tickets for Patidar candidates in constituencies where the community has dominant presence.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old spearhead of \u2018Patidar Anamat Andolan\u2019, during his talks with Congress\u2019 in-charge for Gujarat Ashok Gehlot yesterday sought greater representation of politically influential Patels, who hitherto backed the BJP, in the party\u2019s organisational set up, they said.<\/p>\n
Patel, sources said, termed the representation of Patels in the Congress\u2019 organisational structure in Gujarat as \u201cminimal\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Patidar community leader pitched for constitutional protection to the provision of reservation for them so as to preclude a judicial review.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad a good meeting with Hardik Patel and his colleagues,\u201d Gehlot tweeted last night.<\/p>\n
Patel, who is not eligible to contest either an assembly or Lok Sabha election the minimum age for which is 25 years, also told media persons that he had gone to a hotel here to meet Gehlot, a former Rajasthan Chief Minister, and present his demands before the Congress party.<\/p>\n
Alpesh Thakore, a prominent backward class leader and \u2018Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena convenor\u2019, had joined the Congress in the presence of its vice president Rahul Gandhi yesterday.<\/p>\n
Roping in Patel\u2019s organisation may further bolster the Congress\u2019 efforts to retake Gujarat from the BJP, which has ruled the state without a break for over 22 years now.<\/p>\n
Speculation was rife yesterday that Patel had also met Rahul Gandhi, who was present inside the hotel when he was holding talks with Gehlot.<\/p>\n
Patel, who had denied having met Gandhi yesterday, said today he will meet the Congress leader during his next tour of the state.<\/p>\n
TV channels aired CCTV footage from outside the 5 star hotel which showed Patel entering and leaving the hotel.<\/p>\n
Soon after the footage was released, Gehlot tweeted that Patel had come to meet him, and in a series of posts on the microblogging website accused the BJP government of snooping on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rooms which hv been booked in my name are being checked. We are openly saying, we have met them n will keep meeting them in future too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy CCTV footage was taken by IB n police from Hotel? Is the right to privacy, sole proprietorship of JayAmitShah?\u201d Gehlot said in another tweet.<\/p>\n
Hardik alleged in a tweet: \u201cBJP is expert in snooping.<\/p>\n
They used to snoop on Sanjay Joshi (BJP leader) and now they are snooping on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BJP has been calling Patel an \u201cagent\u201d of the Congress who was trying to \u201cmislead\u201d people of his community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahmedabad Patel quota stir leader Hardik Patel has put forward a set of demands before the Congress, including an assurance about reservation for the Patidars in government jobs and educational institutions, as a condition for supporting the party in the Gujarat Assembly polls. Sources in the Congress party said Patel sought a maximum number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8429,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions\/8429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}