Surendranagar MP dropped from BJP list hits out at party

“Dhanjibhai and Jayantibhai are behind my ouster. In 2007, I had defeated Jayantibhai from Halvad. Since then he had issues with me. He has not been inviting me to programmes in Halvad,” he said.

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Fatepara, who was in Congress in 2007, had defeated Kavadiya, who was a BJP candidate then, in the state Assembly elections.

Kavadiya, however, told The Indian Express that he was the one who had brought Fatepara to the BJP from Congress. “All these are false allegations. I am not even in the BJP parliamentary board. So how am I involved in dropping his name. He is my friend and all these allegations are baseless,” he said.

Similarly, rebutting the accusations, Patel said that the names are sent to the parliamentary board in Gandhinagar, which after approval, are forwarded to Delhi and then finalised by the high command, including the Prime Minister.

“So there is no question of me being responsible for this,” he told The Indian Express.

Fatepara added that now he will decide his future course of action after meeting the leaders of the Koli community, to which he belongs. Munjapara too belongs to the locally-influential Chunvaliya Koli community.

Fatepara, who is also facing a case registered under the Negotiable Instruments Act for allegedly not paying up for a land deal, had defected to the BJP in the run up to the last General Elections in 2014. He had defeated fellow Koli leader and Congress veteran Somabhai Patel.

This is not the first time when the Surendranagar seat has been embroiled in controversies during distribution of tickets. In the 2017 state Assembly elections too, there were strong protests and resentment after Dhanjibhai Patel, an industrialist from Kadva Patidar community, was announced the party candidate for Wadhwan constituency in Surendranagar, dropping the then sitting and two-time MLA Varshaben Doshi.

BJP’s former minister Ranjitsinh Jhala had announced his resignation, alleging the seat was being sold for Rs 9 crore in public during an event.

Adding to this ongoing dissent, during the same time, a purported audio clip of a conversation between an Independent candidate and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani went viral, where the CM was heard asking him to withdraw his nomination. Dhanjibhai Patel’s name also saw strong protests by Jain community leading to nomination of five ‘Jain’ candidates as Independents who later withdrew.