Opposing top Hindutva votary Zadaphia's move to join BJP, ex-Gujarat CM Suresh Mehta inches closer to AAP

By A Representative
As a step to move closer to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), former BJP chief minister Suresh Mehta has declared that he will not side with one of Gujarat’s topmost Hindutva votaries, Gordhan Zadaphia, who has decided to rejoin the Bharatiya Janata Party a little over a year after he became part of the Sangh Parivar rebels to form the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP). Perhaps the most important benefactors of Vishwa Hindu Hindu Parishad’s leader and Hindutva extremist Pravin Togadia, and state home minister during the 2002 riots, Zadaphia till now had been critical of Gujarat chief minister as a “fake Hindutva leader.”
Mehta, who was one of the founders of GPP along with another ex-CM Keshubhai Patel, in an open letter to Zadaphia has said the latter’s decision to rejoin the BJP was a “betrayal” of the cause for which the BJP rebels had formed the new party. Even a bigger betrayal was his decision to “merge” the GPP into the BJP. “If you want you can leave the GPP, but you have no right to dissolve the party like this. You must give us who do not want to join you into the BJP complete charge of the GPP, as we do not want to be party to your betrayal.”
Asking Zadaphia how did he explain his opposition to the Lokyukta bill of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has sought to dilute the ombudsman body’s powers by corning the authority to appoint the Lokayukta, Mehta asked him, “How do you explain you decision to fall on the feet of the man whom you called a demon and a Hitler? Will you please hand over all the accounts of GPP to us, as also all the properties and membership details? Your feeble and comprising ways baffle us all. We cannot accept them.”
According to BJP insiders, Zadaphia’s decision to rejoin the BJP is part of the RSS strategy to dislodge the Congress from power at any cost. The RSS, these sources say, fears that in case Modi does not become Prime Minister, the Samjhauta Express blast case file may sound a death knell for the Sangh Parivar’s supreme leaders. “The file points to the involvement of people in the RSS. This would prove dangerous to everyone, including RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat”, these sources point out. Zadaphia himself has not once, but several times, defended Modi’s in 2002 communal riots, saying he and Modi are in the same boat.
Modi, it is reliably learnt, has accepted Zadaphia by projecting the latter as the BJP’s candidate from Bhavnagar. By doing this, sources say, he wants to his longstanding desire – to politically finish off one of his biggest opponents in Gujarat, Bhavnagar MP and ex-state BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana, who is known to be close to Modi’s biggest bête noire in the RSS, Sanjay Joshi. Joshi currently lives with Rana in Delhi, which is cited as an example of closeness between the two.
Meanwhile, Mehta, who is in touch with one of AAP’s senior leaders, top Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan. Bhushan has already offered Mehta to join the party, it is learnt. One of the “plus points” of Mehta, AAP sources say, is his “liberal thinking” and his “non-RSS background.” Mehta has so far refused to join, but he told Bhushan that he and his supporters would “support AAP in every possible way in Gujarat.” Whether Mehta has enough support to ensure that AAP, still in its infancy, becomes strong is yet to be seen.

Comments

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma* As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor* A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Dalit woman student’s death sparks allegations of institutional neglect in Himachal college

By A Representative A Dalit rights organisation has alleged severe caste- and gender-based institutional violence leading to the death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman student at Government Degree College, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, and has demanded arrests, resignations, and an independent inquiry into the case.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

The architect of Congolese liberation: The life and legacy of Patrice Lumumba

By Harsh Thakor* Patrice Émery Lumumba remains a central figure in the history of African decolonization, serving as the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic of the Congo. Born on July 2, 1925, Lumumba emerged as a radical anti-colonial leader who sought to unify a nation fractured by decades of Belgian rule. His tenure, however, lasted less than seven months before his dismissal and subsequent assassination on January 17, 1961.

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

Search This Blog