ગુજરાતી
English
Dilip Patel Ahmedabad, June 23, 2025
It has been almost 2 years since Shaktisinh Gohil was appointed as the state president on June 9, 2023. He resigned after failing in Visavadar and Kadi assembly elections. He also resigned when Congress lost the Lok Sabha elections. His work is being weighed on the scales.
Why was he appointed
Jagdish Thakor of his village was accused of giving ticket money to candidates in the elections. Therefore, a complaint was lodged in Movdi to investigate his assets.
All other prominent leaders of Gujarat have been given posts. Shaktisinh has been appointed not on the basis of caste but on the basis of personality. He has a clean image.
Till date no one has been able to understand why 64-year-old Shaktisinh Harischandra Gohil was made the president of Gujarat Congress. Gohil hails from the pre-independence royal family of Neemda princely state of Bhavnagar. The reason for his selection for the post of president was his proximity to Saurashtra region and KC Venugopal. He is a member of Rajya Sabha and national spokesperson of the party. He is soft-spoken and outspoken. His personality is humble and friendly. He has the ability to handle situations even with people who are difficult to get along with. He became a minister in the Gujarat government at the young age of 31. As a minister, he had portfolios like finance, education, health, environment, Narmada and general administration in the 90s. He was the leader of opposition in the assembly and the chief whip of the party. He himself has lost one assembly and Lok Sabha election after another. He is currently a member of Rajya Sabha. His success has been good performance on stage, on television and in the press. There are no controversies of personal entanglement. He has not bought and sold tickets in elections. He does not have any special group of his own. He is a learned politician. He has been a lawyer. He has the ability to draw fine lines. He studies deeply. There is clarity in his thoughts. He can give logical arguments. He became famous in the country by exposing the GSPC scam of Rs 20 thousand crores and proved the scams of the Modi government.
His biggest failure was that he could not stop a popular Congress leader like Arjun Modhwadia from joining the BJP.
Defeat in Lok Sabha
Congress won one seat out of 26. He has been successful in defeating the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections for the third time in a row.
He failed completely in the Lok Sabha elections. Genniben’s victory is not the victory of Congress or Shakti Singh. It is the victory of those BJP leaders who stood against Shankar Chaudhary. Genniben’s victory is her own victory. Amit Shah secretly helped Genniben, this is his victory. This is the victory of casteism. This is not the victory of Congress. Therefore, as soon as Genniben won, she said that the organization in Congress is weak, if we have to win the election, then the organization has to be strengthened. Genniben directly attacked Shakti Singh by taking his name. However, later Geniben was forced to change the topic. Shakti Singh was successful in establishing in Delhi that Geniben’s victory was his victory. But the situation is different.
Shakti Singh’s victory is considered only if he could create public opinion against EVM. He could have made Chandan Thakor win instead of Geniben. Bharat Solanki was active in defeating the candidates, he could have stopped them. If Tushar Chaudhary and Amit Chavda had won in the Lok Sabha, it would have been Shakti Singh’s victory. Amit Chavda’s parliamentary constituency has 6 lakh Kshatriyas, while Congress has 9 lakh votes. Still they lost. Shakti Singh and Bharat Madhav Singh Solanki themselves are responsible for this.
Amit Shah’s help
Amit Shah created a lot of ruckus in the Gandhinagar meeting and despite rigging in the voting, he did not take a single step against Amit Shah. Shakti Singh was not aggressive in making the Congress candidate win from Gandhinagar. It seemed as if he was helping Amit Shah. If not, why did the candidate not make public the 209 complaints against Amit Shah? When the candidate gave details of the leaders and workers who were involved in anti-party activities, no action was taken against them. An important Congress leader from Kalol was in the fray to make Genniben win, but he did not stay in Gandhinagar area to defeat Amit Shah. No help in the attack Despite complaints of irregularities in the elections, they have completely failed to take action against them. Another failure was that when the Congress office was attacked by BJP goons, he did not come to the office for three days and could not encourage the workers. In the attack, Shailesh Parmar saved Amit Shah’s son. Still they have failed to take action against Parmar. Now by making the same Shailesh Parmar the working president, they have laid the foundation for defeat in the 2027 elections. Sonia Gandhi has done the work of testing him, but all his strengths and weaknesses have been exposed. Shakti Singh himself cannot give up his royal style.
He left Ahmed Patel and kept following KC Venugopal.
He used to stay with Mukul Wasnik.
Shaktisinh is not active in Gujarat. He focuses more on Delhi Rajya Sabha. He is not aggressive. The aggression that should be there against the establishment is not there. He remained silent for 2 years in Gujarat against Amit Shah.
At present, he does not have a single assembly or Lok Sabha seat that he can win. He is contesting from Bhavnagar South assembly seat.
He won four times. Then he kept losing continuously. He went to Kutch and won once. Thus he has no base.
He may be a good spokesperson, but is not an organisation man. He does not like to travel. State president CD Patel and P
He should be like Rawal who keep travelling continuously. He does not like to be with the people much.
Venu Gopal’s robe
Shaktisinh has been walking holding the jaw of KC Venugopal. The challenge was to improve his performance in the elections, but he did not succeed. Mukul Wasnik himself is an ineffective leader. The BJP constantly propagates that the people of Gujarat vote in the name of Narendra Modi and install EVMs. They have not been able to bring out the truth of this.
The new president of Gujarat Congress calls every previous president good. No influential leader has been allowed to emerge in the party itself.
No group
He has always been secretive. He maintains secrecy. They do not let the workers come close to them because they constantly want to show that they are not in any group and do not want to form any group. But they forget that there should be a group that can draw votes from them. Everyone is in the party. That is why they could not bring about change. They do not have any group of their own, this is a good thing.
In a party divided by factions, he belonged to the Ahmed Patel faction. He did not succeed in promoting the old jogis or the lame horses who have become useless and irrelevant. He could not encourage the young and the new people. He has succeeded in giving responsibility to the youth. But he belongs to a particular caste.
There are internal factions in the Congress party which have lost influence and power. These factions do not allow a promising leader to succeed. They have become a victim of people who have a tendency to stop the growth of the party or marginalize it.
Even Ahmed Patel’s faction was not with him. Bharat Solanki used to pull his ears. He could not do the work like Ahmed Patel. He does not have anyone trustworthy. If Shailesh Parmar is there then the party cannot run on his trust.
Organization
He never did any organizational work. He could not become a good organizer. Ahmed Patel never handed over the work of organization to anyone. Apart from him, there is no one in Congress whom the workers accept. He could not build a good organization in Gujarat. He does not have the ability to work with anyone. That is why he was surrounded by people who do Haji-Ha. He did not give much importance to those who speak the truth. He is not a grassroots leader like Rahul Gandhi.
Jignesh Mevani could have been a strong combination. He did not sideline those who spoiled the work of the party. The new president had no shortage of work. He could not do what he had to do to revive and reorganize the taluka and district level units of the party. He could not make major cuts in the state level structure of the party either.
He could not win the elections of municipalities, taluka panchayats, district panchayats, mannagars.
He has not been able to bring 4 crore members associated with 63 thousand cooperative institutions, cooperative banks, cooperative dairies with the Congress.
Programmes
He has not been able to give aggressive programmes against the BJP across the state. It has been seen that he is protesting just for the sake of protest. Although there was no one more disruptive than him in the party, he has not been able to do a good job in it. He has not been able to play the role of opposition well in giving programmes or raising voice against the government even at the taluka level. Some of his arrogance is affecting the workers.
Corruption
When he was the leader of the opposition, he used to bring a corruption case against the BJP government every week. He was successful in bringing the GSPC scam of Rs 20 thousand against Narendra Modi. But as soon as he became the state president, he could not use that strategy. He is being given new scams every day. Still for some reason he has not exposed these scams to defeat the opposition. There are many such examples. If he had exposed the scams of Bhupendra Patel and Narendra Modi’s government, Congress would have got 10 per cent more votes. But he has completely failed to do so.
Politics
He has diplomacy, but he has not succeeded in making the party win. He cannot instill the spirit of democracy by renouncing politicking.
After winning just 17 seats in the 2022 assembly elections, Congress was brought in to breathe and boost its confidence, which was struggling to stay alive on a ventilator, but he could not do so. The Delhi experiment did not prove to be good.
During his time, 5 MLAs have joined the BJP.
Shaktisinh was made in-charge of Bihar and Delhi, but he did not succeed. His background with extensive experience in political and administrative fields did not help the party.
Sleeper cells
The Congress party is full of spies. Be it universities, state offices or taluka offices, there are spies of the ruling party everywhere. There is a worker who has been working as a spy in the Ahmedabad regional office for the last 24 years, but no one can remove him. If they remove him, he comes back to the same place again. Some spies are now joining the BJP. However, many people know who such spies are. They seem to be connected to sleeper cell people who are working for the BJP. Despite having companions like Rohan Gupta and Bipin Gota, he was made a Lok Sabha candidate. Hardcore casteist leaders of Congress are joining the BJP.
They could not remove those leaders. Be it Kheda, Surendranagar, Surat or Ahmedabad. The latest information reaches important leaders of BJP. Shaktisinh Gohit has failed to break this channel.
Assembly
In the Lok Sabha elections, the Kshatriya movement got 2 percent support from the Congress, otherwise there would have been a huge erosion of votes. In the assembly elections held in December 2022, Congress lost its deposit in 44 seats. Who are your candidates in almost all of those seats? They were second after the winning BJP candidate by getting more votes than the Congress candidate. They could not improve those seats. In 2022, AAP got five seats and got 13 percent votes. Congress got 27 percent. They could not make any strategy to increase these votes. They got the same number of votes in the Lok Sabha as well. In the 2022 elections, the number of votes received by the Congress and AAP candidates in 33 seats was more than the total votes received by the winning BJP candidate. They had no idea of improving those seats. In the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP came close to defeat. However, the Congress could not do so in 2024. The misfortune of the Congress is that people joining the Congress in 2022 dream of becoming the Congress president. This is the situation of the Congress. Shailesh Parmar behaved like a pseudo president. The Congress is in a situation where there is a castor oil minister in a barren desert. Shaktisinh has behaved as if he has become the president to get his work done. He did not do what he should have done to strengthen the Congress. After Ahmed Patel left, the assets of the Congress have been exhausted. No one comes to the Congress office. The Congress had a golden time, it wasted the time. The golden opportunity to win the 2027 assembly elections was wasted because of two seats in 2025. (Google translation from Gujarati)
