The AICC session is being held in Gujarat after 64 years in a year that marks the centenary year of the lone presidential term of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The party will hold the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting at Sardar Patel Memorial in Shahibaug on April 8. The AICC session will be held on the “banks of Sabarmati” on April 9. The congruence of Patel’s 150th anniversary and Congress’s choice of holding the AICC session at this venue hold more symbolic value as the party had earlier helplessly allowed the ruling BJP to chip away Sardar’s legacy and de-facto use it against the Congress in a big way over the last decade and a half. Some go on to argue that refocussing on Sardar may well calm the Patidar sentiment in Gujarat, that has been largely against the Congress since the days of Madhavsinh Solanki’s implementation of Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim (KHAM) social engineering to win 149 assembly seats in 1985. Party leaders otherwise refuse to attach such significance to the event on record.
“You cannot view Sardar Patel through the lenses of one particular community or the other,” reacted Manish Doshi, Congress spokesperson in Gujarat.
