AHMEDABAD: Admitting that more than one BJP ticket seeker has filed a nomination in spite of the party’s refusal to field them, Gujarat BJP president Chandrakanta Patil on Friday threatened adequate action against them in case they don’t withdraw their nominations within the stipulated time.
Speaking to the media, Gujarat BJP President CR Patil pointed out that for 182 seats, as many as 4100 aspirants had sought tickets from BJP and it is only natural that that denied tickets will be unhappy. However, Patil exuded confidence that the workers will beat the frustration and gear up to work for the party.
Underlining that three or four candidates have indeed filed their nomination papers despite the party mandate being otherwise, Patil said that if they fail to withdraw their candidature within the specified timeframe, BJP will initiate adequate action against them.
The resentment against the party’s list of candidates has been raging within BJP in Gujarat since the announcement of the first list and despite efforts of the senior party leaders including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the discontent has shown no sign of waning.
On Thursday at least four former members of the assembly denied party diktat and filed their nominations as independent candidates.
Allegedly ‘insulted’ over the denial of the ticket by the saffron party, the controversial strongman of Waghodia and six terms MLA Madhu Shrivastava severed his ties with the party and went on to file his nominations on Thursday.
BJP had replaced Shrivastava with Ashwin Patel, much to the chagrin of Shrivastava and his supporters.
While the top leadership of the state unit left no stone unturned to mollycoddle Shrivastava, he denied them any audience and stuck to his guns.
Apart from Shrivastava, in Padra, two terms MLA Dinesh Patel too defied party directives and jumped into the poll fray as an independent candidate as did Mavji Desai, the former Vice Chairman of Banas Dairy and Chairman of Deesa APMC at Dhanera in North Gujarat.
A close aide of OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, Dhavalsinh Zala also followed the same trajectory blaming intra-party factionalism for his actions.
Defying BJP’s 75-year age criteria, Seven times MLA from Manjalpur in Vadodara, Yogesh Patel (76) too filed his nomination as the BJP candidate for the constituency on Thursday before the party formally announced its candidate for the seat.
While the top leaders of BJP have been trying to resolve the candidate issue for Manjalpur for a long time, till the filing of the story Manjalpur remains the lone seat in Gujarat for which the BJP hasn’t formally announced its candidate.