Congress shutting doors, AAP yet to build presence, Hardik Patel may return to BJP

Unless for some major last-minute glitch, Hardik Patel‘s return to his ideological moorings and to the BJP is just a matter of time now. For all practical purposes, his window of reviving his status in the Congress is almost shutting and the only other option remains joining the less palatable Aam Aadmi Party that is only trying to get its foothold in Gujarat.

It is learnt that Hardik’s entry to the BJP is being worked at the party’s highest level with an active nudge from the top RSS brass, who see a potential leader in Hardik.

Hardik, who represents the Patidar youth face, was thrown up by the Patidar agitation of 2015, demanding that the community be included in the Other Backward Community (OBC) category. This had led to reservation for the Economically Backward Section in Gujarat. The agitation that had rocked Gujarat in 2015 had the RSS’ blessings that had passed a resolution in 1981 seeking “necessary concessions to other economically backward sections to ensure their speedy development.”

RSS BACKING ON QUOTA

“The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) is of the opinion that the policy of reservation has, because of its wrong implementation, become a tool of power politics and election-tactics instead of serving the purpose for which it was framed. And this has resulted in generating mutual illwill and conflict in society”, read a 1981 ABPS resolution of the RSS that was passed, not surprisingly, after the violent anti-reservation riots in Gujarat.