Gandhinagar, July 3: Senior Gujarat Congress MLA and prominent Koli community leader Kunwarji Bavalia on Tuesday resigned as the party legislator and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is set to get a berth in the Vijay Rupani government.
After handing over his papers to Gujarat assembly speaker Rajendra Trivedi, Bawalia, a four-time MLA from Jasdan constituency in Rajkot district, reached the BJP’s state headquarters ‘Shree Kamalam’ where he was formally inducted into the party by state unit president Jitu Vaghani.
Bavalia has been a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament and wields clout over the Koli community, which constitutes over 22% of Gujarat’s six crore population.
Bavalia had met Congress president Rahul Gandhi less than a fortnight back to express his unhappiness over the state of affairs in Gujarat under the young leadership, including president Amit Chavda and leader of opposition Paresh Dhanani.
“Rahul Gandhi (Congress president) practices caste politics for vote bank. This didn’t allow me to serve my constituency. I have been for some time carefully observing the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading the nation toward development. I have faith in Modi, Shah (BJP president Amit Shah) and the state leadership,” Bavaliya said, soon after joining the BJP.
Bavalia was elected to the Lok Sabha from Rajkot during the 2009 elections.
“Bavaliya is a grassroots leader and he will help the BJP to further strengthen its base,” said BJP leader Vaghani.
GPCC president Amit Chavda, on the other hand, accused Bavalia of “betrayal” for “personal gains”.
“He has betrayed his voters and the koli community that elected him,” he said.
With two more MLAs – Javeed Pirzada and Vikram Madam – having already expressed unhappiness with the Congress party recently, Dhanani and Chavda face a serious challenge to get the house in order within six months of coming at the helm. All these four MLAs represent Saurashtra region where the Congress made major inroads during the 2017 assembly elections.
Source Hindustan Times
