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AMN / WEB DESK

Three years after he joined the Congress, and weeks after he said he was “keeping his options open”, which includes the possibility of joining the BJP, Hardik Patel resigned from the grand old party on Wednesday.

Top leaders, he wrote, “were distracted by their mobile phones” and the Gujarat Congress was more interested in ensuring “chicken sandwiches” for them.
Hardik Patel’s letter was “dictated by the BJP” and he was pressured to quit, countered Gujarat Congress leaders.

The high-profile Patidar leader has been in touch with the BJP leadership over the past two months and is likely to join the ruling party within a week, sources said. Hardik Patel has, so far, vehemently denied the Congress-to-BJP switch that many young leaders have made in the past two years.

For the Congress, which just held a revival strategy meet, it is an ill-timed exit in Gujarat ahead of elections later this year.

Hardik Patel’s resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi aimed several zingers at Rahul Gandhi, who did not meet with him separately during his recent Gujarat visit.

“When I met top leaders, they seemed distracted by their mobile phones and other issues as opposed to listening to issues concerning Gujarat,” wrote Hardik Patel. “Senior leaders in Gujarat are more interested in ensuring that visiting leaders get their chicken sandwiches than engaging with people during yatras,” he commented.

“Our leader was abroad when he was needed in India during critical times,” Hardik Patel went on, echoing criticism heaped on Rahul Gandhi by critics including the BJP.

Hardik Patel was Working President of the Congress in Gujarat, a post that he said had meant little in his years in the part

The Congress leadership “strongly dislikes Gujarat and has no interest in the state”, he said, adding that the party “has been rejected in virtually every state because they have no roadmap to present to the people.”

The party, Hardik Patel said, “came in the way” of resolving key issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Goods and Services Tax, the Ayodhya temple-mosque case and Article 370 (the scrapped constitutional provision that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir).

Gujarat Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil tore into Hardik Patel, reminding him of his criticism of the BJP in the past. He accused the BJP of using agencies like the CBI, Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax to target Congress leaders and force them to quit.