ગુજરાતી
English
Dilip Patel
Ahmedabad, 17 July 2024 (Google translation from Gujarati)
It has been a year since Shaktisinh Gohil was elected as the new state president on 9 June 2023. Then his work is being weighed on how successful and how unsuccessful.
Why was he appointed?
His close villager Jagdish Thakor was accused of giving tickets to candidates in the elections by taking money. Therefore, complaints were made before Modis to investigate his properties.
All other prominent leaders of Gujarat have already been assigned the post. Shaktisinh’s appointments were not caste-based but person-based. He has a clean image.
Till date no one has understood why 63-year-old Shaktisinh Harishchandra Gohil was made the president of Gujarat Congress. Gohil belongs to the royal family of Limda princely state of Bhavnagar during the pre-independence monarchy. The choice for the post of President was Saurashtra.
Rajya Sabha member and national spokesperson of the party. Soft-spoken and outspoken. Personality is mild and gentle. Has the knack of handling situations with people who are difficult to mingle with.
He became a minister at the young age of 31. As a minister in the 90s, he had portfolios like finance, education, health, environment, Narmada and general administration. He was the leader of the opposition in the Legislative Assembly and the chief whip of the party. He himself has been losing one assembly and Lok Sabha election after another. Currently he is a member of the Rajya Sabha.
His success
Performance on stage, television and in print has been good. No controversy of personal entanglements. He did not do ticket-buying in elections. Has no specific group of his own. A studious politician. Has been a lawyer. Has the ability to travel well. Study deeply. Has clarity of thought. Can give logical arguments.
His biggest failure was that he could not retain a popular Congress leader like Arjun Modhwadia in the Congress.
Lost in Lok Sabha
Congress has won one seat out of 26. He has been successful in defeating Congress in the Lok Sabha elections for the third time in a row.
He is failing completely in the Lok Sabha elections. Ganiben’s victory is not the victory of Congress or Shakti Singh. It is the victory of BJP leaders who contested against Shankar Chaudhary. Ganiben has her own victories. Helping Ganiben secretly is the victory of Amit Shah. Casteism has won. It is not the victory of Congress. So, as soon as Ganiben won, she said that the organization in Congress is weak, if we want to win the election, we will have to strengthen the organization. Ganiben directly attacked Shakti Singh. However, Ganiben was forced to resign again. Shakti Singh has succeeded in establishing in Delhi that Ganiben’s victory is his own victory, but the circumstances are different.
Shakti Singh’s victory would have mattered only if he could have got a referendum conducted against EVMs. He could have got Chandan Thakor elected. Bharat Solanki was active in defeating the candidates, he could have stopped this. If Tushar Chaudhary and Amit Chavda had won, it would have been Shakti Singh’s victory. Amit Chavda has 6 lakh Kshatriyas and Congress has 9 lakh votes. Shakti Singh and Bharat Madhav Singh Solanki are themselves responsible for the defeat.
Help Amit Shah
Amit Shah created a lot of ruckus in the Gandhinagar meeting, rigged the voting but no action was taken against Amit Shah himself. Shakti Singh was not aggressive to make the Congress candidate win from Gandhinagar. It seemed as if he was helping Amit Shah. If not, then why did Shakti Singh not reveal that the candidate had complained against Amit Shah. No action was taken against the candidate after giving details of leaders and workers involved in anti-party activities. An important Congress leader from Kalol was in the field to make Ganiben win but he did not stop in Gandhinagar area to defeat Amit Shah.
No help in attack
Despite complaints of rigging in the election, they have failed to take action against him.
The second 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 motivate the workers. Shailesh Parmar saved Amit Shah’s son in the attack. But he is failing to take action against Parmar.
Sonia Gandhi tested him but all his strengths and weaknesses were exposed. Shakti Singh himself cannot give up his royal lifestyle.
Shailesh and Shakti cannot. They keep Mukul Wasnik with them. Gehlot got overwhelmed.
Gehlot has brought Mukul from Maharashtra. Mukul Wasnik will bring power. The president agrees with whatever the high command says. It is alleged that Shakti Singh is not active. He takes oath himself. There is more focus on Delhi Rajya Sabha.
He is not aggressive. The aggression against the government is not what it should be.
At present, he does not have a single seat that he can win on his own. He won four times from Bhavnagar South Assembly seat. Then he kept losing continuously. He went to Kutch once and won. Thus, it has no basis of its own.
He may be a good spokesperson but not an organisation man. He does not like to travel. The state president should be a frequent traveller like CD Patel and Prabodh Rawal. He does not like to be around people much.
Venu Gopal’s attire
Shaktisinh is walking on the jaw of KC Venugopal. It was a challenge to improve his presence in the election but he did not succeed. Mukul Wasnik himself is an ineffective leader. The BJP is constantly spreading rumours that the EVMs are not working.
He is saying that the people of Gujarat are voting in the name of Narendra Modi. His residence
He could not bring out the vitality.
More people live in Delhi than in Gujarat. When the Congress office was attacked, he did not come to Gujarat for three days. He lived in Delhi. The new President says good things about every previous President. There is no influential leader in the party itself.
No group
He has always been secretive. Maintains secrecy. The workers are not allowed to come close, because they constantly want to show that they are not in a group and do not want to form a group. But he forgets that he should have a group that can attract votes. Everyone is in favor. That is why he could not change. He does not have his own group, this is a good thing.
He belonged to the Ahmed Patel faction in a party divided into factions. He failed to remove the old Jogis who had become useless and irrelevant. He could not give preference to young and new people. He has been successful in giving responsibility to the youth.
There are internal factions in the Congress party which have lost influence and power. These groups do not allow a promising leader to succeed. They have been harassed by those who want to block the growth of the party or marginalise them.
Ahmed Patel’s gang was also not with him. Bharat Solanki used to pull his ears. He could not do that like Ahmed Patel. He has no one to trust. If Shailesh Parmar is one, the party cannot sit with him.
Organisation
He has never done organisation work. He is not a good organiser. Ahmed Patel never entrusted organisation work. There is no one in the Congress who does not have acceptance among the workers. He could not build a good organisation in Gujarat. He does not have the ability to work together. That is why he is surrounded by people who do Haji with him. He did not give much importance to people who tell their truth. He is not a down-to-earth political person like Rahul Gandhi.
Jignesh Mevani would have been a strong combination. He did not punish those who were ruining the party’s work. The new president had no dearth of work. He failed to revive and reorganize the taluka and district level units of the party. The party could not make any major changes in the state level structure either.
Programmes
He could not give aggressive programmes against the BJP across the state. It is being seen more as opposition for the sake of opposition. Though there was no one in the party to remain neutral, he still did not do a good job. He could not play the role of opposition well even in giving programmes even to the talukas or raising voice against the government. Some of his arrogance motivates the workers.
Corruption
When he was the opposition leader, he used to bring one corruption case a week against the BJP government. He was able to bring GSPC’s Rs. 20 thousand scam against Narendra Modi. But as soon as he became the state president, he could not use that tactic. He has given new scams every day. Still for some unknown reason he has not disclosed these scams to please 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.
Royalty
He has diplomacy, but he could not succeed in making the party win. He could not create a feeling that democracy is coming from the monarchy.
The Congress, which was struggling on the ventilator of survival after winning only 17 seats in the 2022 assembly elections, was brought in to give relief and boost confidence, but he failed to do so. The Delhi experiment did not prove to be good.
Shakti Singh was made in-charge of Bihar, Delhi but did not succeed. If not, his background with extensive experience in the political and administrative field will not help the party.
Closet for sleeping people
The Congress party is full of spies. Be it a university or a regional office or a taluka office, there are spies of the ruling party everywhere. There is an activist who has been spying on the regional office of Ahmedabad for the last 24 years, but no one can remove him. If you remove them, they come back to the same place. Some spies are now going to BJP. But many people know who such a spy is. People from the sleeper cell working for BJP are seen to be associated with him. Partners include Rohan Gupta to Indravijay himself and Bipin Gota. Hardcore casteists of Congress are in cahoots with BJP. Be it Kheda, Surendranagar, Surat or Ahmedabad. Every moment’s information reaches special BJP leaders. Shaktisinh Gohit is failing to break this channel.
Assembly
Ganiben’s victory has brought enthusiasm, if he had won 13 seats, it would have been easy to win the assembly elections. The Kshatriya movement helped the Congress by 2 per cent, otherwise it would have lost a huge number of votes. In the assembly elections held in December 2022, it lost its deposit in 44 seats and in almost all of those seats, the AAP candidate got more votes than the Congress candidate and came second after the winning BJP candidate. They could not recover those seats.
In 2022, the AAP won five seats and secured 13 per cent votes. The Congress got 27 per cent votes. They are not able to adopt any strategy to increase these votes.
They could not make it. They got the same number of votes in the Lok Sabha as well.
In the 2022 elections, on 33 seats, the number of votes received by the Congress and AAP candidates was more than the total votes received by the victorious BJP candidate. They do not know how to recover those seats. Assembly elections in the year 2017
In the decade of 10, BJP came close to defeat. Which got a good position in 2024 but Congress could not do so.
Congress’s misfortune
People who came to Congress dream of becoming Congress President in 2022. Such is the situation of Congress. Shailesh Parmar was treated like a pseudo president. The condition of Congress is like a minister of castor in a barren desert. Shakti Singh has behaved as if he became the president to get his work done. He did not do what he should have done to strengthen the Congress.
Jignesh Mevani, who came to Congress in 2022, can speak well, can raise issues – health is bad. Asks for hip joint replacement. Ahmed Patel’s departure after undergoing physiotherapy has brought a lot of trouble for the Congress. No one comes to the Congress office. It was the golden period of the Congress, time has been wasted. A golden opportunity to win has been lost. (Google translation from Gujarati)
