Alpesh Thakor, the OBC Ekta Manch leader, who is considered as a big leader of OBCs, had announced in early October that he would join the Congress Party on October 23.  And finally, after joining the Congress, he has sought a ticket from the party to contest for the Viramgam Vidhan Sabha assembly seat.

Viramgam is of much significance to Alpesh, as he hails from the same place and it has a strong dominance of Thakor, Dalits, and OBC. Besides, he will also be able to grab the Patidar votes, as Hardik Patel, the PAAS leader, too, belongs to Viramgam and is against the BJP.

It is also being speculated that in addition to Viramgam, he has also demanded 15 more seats for his followers and that the Congress is considering his request. These seats include Deesa, Radhanpur, Kankarej, Diyodar, Chansama, Siddhpur, Kheralu, Dhandhuka, Bayad, Gandhinagar South, Daskroi, Kapadvanj, Dasada, and Vav.

In the month of July, three senior Congress legislators — Balwantsinh Rajput, MLA from Siddhpur and chief whip of the party; Tejashree Patel from Viramgam; and Vijapur legislator PI Patel — had submitted their resignations from the party to speaker Ramanlal Vora. They had cited the reasons that the Congress was not keen on considering the demand of the Patidars for reservation in government jobs and educational institutions. They later joined the BJP stating that “Modi is Vikas Purush and they wanted to be a part of Modi’s journey of development.”

It is ironical that the Patidar community is not supporting the BJP for the same reason for which these senior leaders decided to quit the Congress.

It is also interesting to note that two out of these three seats might be given to the OBCs for contesting the upcoming assembly elections, as Alpesh has demanded the Viramgam seat for himself and 15 seats additional for his followers — Siddhpur and Viramgam seats are included in his demands.

However, senior and old Congress leaders have shown discontent as these leaders might have to sacrifice their seats. They have proposed to give only 8-9 seats to Alpesh.

As per sources, there is a feeling of dissatisfaction among many senior leaders of Gujarat Pradesh Congress, as Alpesh Thakor is directly interacting with Rahul Gandhi, bypassing the senior Congress leadership in Gujarat. The Congress OBC leaders and veterans, including Bharatsingh Solanki, Jagdish Thakor and Baldevji Thakor are not too happy with Alpesh’s approach and have stated that this could have a bad impact on the party’s election plans.

Meanwhile, the Congress is yet to decide on the number of seats they intend to allocate to the founder of the OSS (OBC, SC, and ST) Ekta March — Alpesh Thakor. He is a strong voice of the downtrodden community and forms about 40% vote chunk in Gujarat and that is what makes him an important contestant for the Congress in Gujarat assembly elections.