Gujarat polls: Big setback for Congress as 11-time MLA Mohansinh Rathwa joins BJP

Gujarat Elections 2022: The Congress on Tuesday suffered a massive jolt as its senior leader and 11-time MLA Mohansinh Rathwa quit the party and joined the BJP. This comes just weeks before the elections in Gujarat, where the Congress has not been in power for the last 27 years. 

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Rathwa, a prominent tribal leader, currently represents the Chhota Udaipur constituency in central Gujarat. In the last election, he saw a very close contest with BJP’s Jashubhai Rathwa but eventually won by just over 1,000 votes. In 2012 too, his victory margin was under 3,000 votes. 

Leaders of some influence leaving the party have become a regular phenomenon in Congress. In the last election, the Congress had bettered its tally and won 77 of 182 seats. However, after losing the poll and having no directions from the central leadership, many leaders left the party.

As of today, the Congress has 62 MLAs – 15 down from what it had got after assembly elections in 2017.     
Among the key leaders who left the party in these five years are Jitu Chaudhary, Pradyumnasinh Jadeja, J V Kakadiya, Akshay Patel, and Brijesh Merja, among others. 

In May this year, Congress leader Hardik Patel, who shot to fame after leading a massive Patidar protest against the BJP in 2015, quit the Congress and raised serious questions about former party chief Rahul Gandhi.

In his resignation letter, Patel, who was handpicked by Gandhi and made Gujarat’s working president, said that the lack of seriousness about issues is a major problem with the Congress Party’s senior leadership. 

“Whenever I met with the senior leadership, always felt that leaders were not really interested in hearing about problems concerning the people of Gujarat but were more engrossed on what messages they had received on their mobile and other such trivial things,” he had said. 

Hardik Patel also said that the country was looking for solutions to issues like Ram Mandir, Article 370, and the implementation of GST but Congress only played the role of a roadblock and was always only obstructive.

Gujarat will go to polls in two phases – December 1 and 5.