With the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti, led by Hardik Patel, now certain to align with the Congress, the ruling BJP in Gujarat has stepped up attacks on the 24-year-old leader, saying the Congress is playing the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) card in which upper castes such as Patidars have no place.
The BJP leaders point to the entry of OBC leader Alpesh Thakor into the Congress as proof of its allegation.
The KHAM experiment was successfully carried out by the Congress in late 1970s and 1980s in Gujarat, helping it to sweep the Assembly elections in the State.
However, the party’s over-dependence on KHAM that excluded upper castes led to the consolidation of upper castes such as Patidars, helping the BJP become a major political force in the State. Subsequently, the BJP made inroads in OBC, Dalit and tribal communities, while keeping its upper caste base intact since 1998.
“The Patidars must understand that the Congress is playing the KHAM card after three decades to win the Assembly polls. It is an exclusionary social engineering experiment from which upper castes are excluded,” Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel says.
Mr. Patel says that under Congress regimes in the past, the Patidars had no say or representation in the State’s politics, while the BJP has give them a lion’s share of posts since 1995.
“In Gujarat, BJP and Patidars are inseparable. When BJP came to power in the state, its first Chief Minister was Keshubhai Patel, a Patidar leader. Then Anandiben Patel became Chief Minister. More than 35 MLAs of the party are from the Patidar community since 1995,” Mr. Patel says. Most of the important portfolios such as Finance, Urban Development and Roads and Buildings had gone to Patidars under BJP rule.
