Vaghela jolts Cong, ‘won’t return’ to BJP

Manas Dasgupta

Gandhinagar, July 21

Dealing a blow to the Congress’ prospects in the Gujarat Assembly elections scheduled for later this year, veteran leader and former Chief Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela today announced his resignation from the party with an “assurance” that he would neither return to the BJP, nor form a new party.

Addressing supporters on his 77th birthday, Vaghela said he sought Mahatma Gandhi’s “guidance” by visiting his samadhi and the Father of the Nation told him to “listen to the voice of my soul”.

Edit: Vaghela walks out again 

He said he was “therefore severing his relations with the Congress. I will be free of all disciplines of the Congress (and also the BJP) and the Congress will be free of me”.

His claim that the Congress had thrown him out of the party “24 hours ago”, however, was promptly denied by the party. State Congress spokesman Manish Doshi said no such order had been issued. “It is Vaghela who has severed ties and the party has not sacked him,” Doshi said.

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The state Congress leadership, however, had issued him a stern warning last night against any public utterances against the party and its leadership as he did at a convention on June 24 in which he had taken the high command to task for its “lack of poll preparedness”.

In Delhi, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala added, “Neither has Congress taken any disciplinary action against him, nor has he been expelled.”

Vaghela had accused the party leadership of having taken “supari” (contract) from the BJP to “deliberately lose the elections” in favour of the ruling party, making his intentions clear that he was disenchanted with the Congress after the party refused to bow to his pressure to declare him as its “face” in the upcoming elections.

Vaghela said he would submit his resignation as the Leader of the Opposition 

soon and also resign as an MLA after the Rajya Sabha polls due on August 8.

He claimed 15 to 20 Congress MLAs had called on him last night and wanted to attend today’s convention. “But I told them not to since the party will not take their presence lightly,” he said.

Vaghela, however, did not spell out if he was quitting politics though he specified he would not join the BJP, his mother organisation which he left two decades ago following differences with Narendra Modi, who at that time was the political adviser to the then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel. He later floated his own Rashtriya Janata Dal, and formed a government with outside support from the Congress.

But in the 1998 Assembly poll, his RJP could muster merely seven seats and was forced to merge his party with the Congress a year later.