The battle of saffron bastion in Gujarat

A day after Alpesh Thakor shared the stage with Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Gandhinagar, around two dozen supporters wait outside his small office in north Ahmedabad, in the hope that he will address them. Thakor, who founded the Kshatriya Thakor Sena and, later, the OBC, SC, ST Ekta Manch (OSS), is all over the news after he came back to the Congress at the rally, giving the party a huge leg-up ahead of the Gujarat assembly election. (He had been with the Congress till 2011.)

With an iMac adorning his desk and his iPhone hardly catching a break, the goateed 41-year-old leader from the Thakor community keeps turning his head to catch a glimpse of a Gujarati news channel on a television mounted on the wall. He says the OSS has been preparing for the election, to be held on December 9 and 14, for a year now. The organisation has established its presence at the polling-booth level in 108 of the 182 assembly constituencies in the state. “In 77 constituencies, our booth management is 100% complete.” He believes this will help the Congress win more than 125 seats. That is more than what the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party won in 2007 and 2012 — 117 and 115 respectively.

A win here will revive the sagging fortunes of the Congress as it prepares to retain Karnataka next year and take on the BJP in the 2019 general election. A trinity of young Turks — Thakor, Patidar leader Hardik Patel and Dalit activist Jignesh Mevani — is central to the Congress’s plans. They are all vehemently opposed to the BJP and can dictate how their respective communities vote. Hardik has offered to support the Congress if it supports their demand for reservation and Mevani has said that while he will not join the Congress, Dalits will vote for the party.

**Another setback to the BJP government came in the form of large-scale protests by Dalits after four members of the community were publicly stripped and flogged in Una in south Gujarat in July 2016. Jignesh Mevani, a lawyer and activist, spearheaded the protests. The unrest was one of the reasons the then chief minister Anandiben Patel had to resign the following month. Though Patidars hoped another one of their own, Nitin Patel, would replace her, the BJP made Vijay Rupani, a Jain, the chief minister, with Nitin being made his deputy. **