A day after expressing willingness to step down from her post, Gujarat’s first woman Chief Minister Anandiben Patel chose to remain at her official residence in the State capital Gandhinagar and avoided attending her office.
Patel continued to take interest in the State Government related matters and held several meeting with the senior officials at her resident on Tuesday. In fact even after she through her Facebook post on Monday requested party leaders to relieve from her responsibility, she had brief meeting with the State BJP president Vijay Rupani as well as State BJP organising secretary Bhikhubhai Dalsania. Subsequently she continuously met State Government officials and visitors.
In view of Patel’s letter BJP’s national joint organisational secretary V Satish and Gujarat BJP in-charge Dinesh Sharma are arriving to Gandhinagar on Wednesday. Besides, party’s national president Amit Shah too is expected to visiting the State on Thursday and Friday.
Amid speculation over his elevation as the Gujarat Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani celebrated his 61st birthday on Tuesday at his hometown Rajkot with family and friends. According to his close aide, Rupani also attended Sahay Setu Camp at his assembly constituency–Rajkot West. Though there are at least four contenders for the coveted post, many in the saffron party consider Rupani as frontrunner to become successor of Anandiben.
Interestingly amid plethora of speculations over the new Gujarat Chief Minister, a section of State BJP firmly believe that Anandiben would remain at the helm for few more months and senior party leaders are visiting her to persuade to carry on her responsibility.
“Instead of submitting her resignation to the Governor after consulting senior party leaders, Anandiben chose to put a letter on her Facebook page. In the letter she has only expressed desire to step down, but it is not at all resignation letter,” claimed a BJP leader.
Her recent decisions including waiver of toll tax for private vehicle, exemption in fees for girls studying in medical, implementation of 7th pay commission and withdrawal of 90 per cent cases related to pro-quota Patidar agitation as well as State Government’s soft approach resulted conditional bail of Hardik Patel suggest that she would remain at the helm, he opined.
Meanwhile Opposition parties—Congress and AAP—didn’t missed the opportunity to attack ruling party following the letter bomb of the Gujarat CM. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel said that Patel’s resignation was an indication of BJP’s sure defeat in 2017 polls.
Gujarat Congress in-charge Gurudas Kamat said that Anandiben’s resignation was overdue and the BJP leadership tried to protect her from several months in spite of growing unrest Dalit and Patidar communities over Una Dalit beating incident and ‘highhandedness’ of police post Patidar Maha Rally at GMDC ground in Ahmedabad last year.
Countering the opposition party’s attack, Gujarat BJP spokesman Bharat Pandya said that Congress and AAP were trying to defame Gujarat and trying to reap political benefit from BJP’s internal matter. Other parties shouldn’t interpret wrongly when Anandiben herself came forward to relieve her from the post citing the reason of age.