By IANS
Ahmedabad : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership has been making all-out efforts to rope in former Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel, who has been unhappy with his successor Narendra Modi, to campaign for the party in the next month’s elections.
Patel has been leading party leaders and functionaries who have opposed Modi’s “autocratic” style of functioning. He has refused to campaign for the party in the Dec 11 and Dec 16 elections.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said here Thursday that senior party leader Arun Jaitley held talks with Patel to convince him to come back to the party’s mainstream.
Asked repeatedly about the outcome of the meeting, Javadekar evaded a direct reply but said, “Wait for a few days.”
This was one of the several meetings that have taken place between Jaitley, who is in charge of Gujarat elections, and Patel over the issue.
Patel belongs to Saurashtra and has a strong hold over the Leuva Patel community. The Patels have been the economic and electoral backbone of the BJP for almost two decades now.
Patel’s support is crucial for the party in Saurashtra, where it faces the stiffest challenge. There are 52 seats in the region.
Earlier, Patel’s son Bharat Patel had refused to contest on the BJP ticket saying that his father had got a raw deal from the party.
Meanwhile, confusion prevailed over the candidates fielded by Uma Bharati’s Bharatiya Janshakti Party (BJSP) as they refused to withdraw their nomination amid reports of their leader rejoining the BJP.
When Javadekar was asked about Uma Bharati’s return and the withdrawal of her candidates, he was evasive. “Anyone withdrawing in our favour is a good thing,” he said.
BJSP spokesperson Umesh Mathur told reporters there was no confirmation of Uma Bharati returning to the BJP.