AAP pursues an opening in Gujarat
Times of IndiaJiby writes on politics, governance and legal affairs, and enjoys hunting for data to make his arguments. Arvind Kejriwal’s announcement that Aam Aadmi Party will contest all 182 seats in the 2022 Gujarat assembly election comes amid such a possibility, howsoever remote, in Gujarat. Now the Patidars have grievances with BJP too, apart from the longstanding antagonism towards Congress ever since Madhavsinh Solanki’s rise and his failed KHAM social engineering attempt. A track record as a weak opposition coupled with frequent defections and inability to highlight government failures during the second wave, which required high court intervention, make the Congress’s pitch for regime change in 2022 rather weak. Moreover, the combined firepower of Gujarat’s dominant Hindutva credo and the Narendra Modi factor had blunted the Patidar resentment at its peak between 2015 and 2017.