Skip to main content

Police action on Gujarat Patidars: Hushed whispers point to orders from Delhi to a well-placed official in Gandhinagar

By RK Misra*
The demand of the Patidar (Patel) community for caste-based reservation under the Other Backward Class (OBC) category has led to turmoil in Gujarat. And there is more in store. The community is seeking statutory guarantees for government jobs and admissions to educational institutions despite being numerically very strong and economically quite influential.
The Patels account for about 14 per cent of the 63 million population of the state.
Chief minister Anandiben Patel is from the community as is the president of the Gujarat BJP, RC Fardu. Seven of the 24 ministers and 42 of the 182 legislators in the Assembly are from the community. However, the Patels argue that it has become difficult to earn their livelihood. This they say is coupled with the lack of jobs and difficulty of getting admissions to educational institutions.
The leaders of the demonstrations have built up the agitation with amazing speed, fanning the sense of deprivation within the community to mount a statewide stir of mind-boggling proportions. This is mirrored in the more than 300 meetings and rallies organized within 50 days beginning July 6 and culminating in the ‘maharally’ at Ahmedabad August 25.Hardik puts the number of people at this rally at 18 lakh, with the intelligence bureau stating it to be eight lakh. The resources required to transport, camp and feed this number is immense.
The questions that arise are what ignited the orgy of violence when the August 25 rally had passed off peacefully, who is behind this -- both the agitation and the organization -and where is all this headed.
The ‘maharally’ was proceeding absolutely as planned when the 22 year old convenor of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), Hardik Patel, departed from the prepared script of handing over the charter of demands to the district collector and announced that the Chief Minister should come to the venue to receive it and he would sit on fast at the venue until she did so. This led to a crack between his PAAS and the Sardar Patel Group (SPG) which had jointly organised the rally. By nightfall there were just a thousand people left at the venue to give company to a fasting Hardik.
However, things took an ugly turn when police swooped down on the venue picking up Hardik and four others fasting with him..As the news of the police action spread, largescale violence broke out all over Gujarat. Soon the state was in flames with the police itself under attack.
More than 300 buses and numerous government buildings and police stations had been torched or damaged. Railway tracks were uprooted throwing life totally out of gear. Conservative estimates put the overall loss during these 24 hours of mayhem at around Rs 25,000 crore. Additionally a dying agitation was resurrected.
“If Hardik and his supporters had been left alone that night, the morning after would well have ensured his total isolation”, says a top bureaucrat on condition of anonymity.
Minister of state for home Rajni Patel denies ordering the police action, as does the Chief Minister. Hushed whispers within the police hierarchy speak of orders from Delhi to a highly placed official in Gandhinagar who bypassed the official line-up. It also hints at a top person in the ruling party’s national hierarchy getting in touch with a favourite police officer crucially placed in the DGPs office ordering it. The Chief Minister has ordered an enquiry but little is expected to come out of it. It could be thus either a goof-up or that someone did not want the agitation to die down.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has very high stakes in Gujarat. Congress leader of the Opposition and his one-time colleague in the RSS, Shankersinh Vaghela is emphatic that nothing in the Gujarat government moves without Modi’s nod even today and such a key decision would not be possible without him knowing about it.
However, while he is known to favour a single point reservation for the economically backward and is also prone to experimentation with pilot projects of a political nature, Modi would not do anything that rocks Gujarat and exposes his ‘model’ to ridicule or failure. The present Chief Minister, Anandiben Patel is his chosen successor in the state and he would not endanger her position.
Hardik, meanwhile, made it clear that he intends to scale up this stir to national levels.”We may be 1.80 crores in Gujarat but nationally we are 27 crores and account for two other chief ministers-Nitish Kumar of Bihar and Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh- besides 117 MPs in Parliament”, he said.
Nitish is a kurmi while Naidu is a kapu. Nitish had lent support to the Patidar stir but has equally quickly moved away realizing that his OBC vote bank in election bound Bihar may extract a very high price from him. The Patels are also enlisting the support of the Gujjars of Rajasthan.
In anycase the Gujarat chief minister has made it adequately clear that the Supreme Court mandates no more than 50 per cent reservation and this quota having already been taken up, there is no scope for reservation for the Patels.
The Patidar agitation leaders are aware of this so obviously there goal is a national re-think on the whole issue which again would be an embarrassing headache for the prime minister if the issue takes off at the national level. The danger of a violent caste conflict is an ever present one running uniformly through the fabric of this quota stir.
While Sangh parivar organs are also not averse to a national debate on the issue,the present agitation hides more than it shows up. It was initiated by dissident Patidar elements within the Gujarat BJP who wanted to distabilise Patel. Aware that nothing else would work because of the Prime Minister’s support to her, they focused on a community uprising on this sensitive issue. However the speed with which it caught the imagination of the young, saw these elements soon becoming redundant .
Circumstantial evidence also points to a VHP connect to the stir. Gordhan Jhadapia has been the party pointsman to reach out to the Patidar clansmen in other parts of the country. Ahead of the 2014 elections he was posted to Uttar Pradesh to mobilize the Kurmis (Patels) and has ever since been touring various parts of the country for this purpose.
He is known to be a diehard supporter of Pravin Togadia,the head honcho of the VHP. Modi and Togadia were close friends but fell out in the political journey after he became the Gujarat Chief Minister and have been bitter rivals ever since. Jhadapia had once publicly spurned a berth in the Modi cabinet at the swearing-in ceremony.
Both Togadia and Jhadapia are Patels. Jhadapia had quit the BJP in protest against Modi and floated his own regional outfit wherein party veteran Keshubhai Patel also quit to join in. Though this outfit did not make much a mark at the hustings but an analysis of the 2007 and 2012 results showed that it had significantly dented the BJPs Patel vote bank in Gujarat.
The Chief Minister has also warned her community members on more than one occasion to see through the game aimed at destablising her government. Non-Patel BJP leaders also see in it an attempt to target Modi obliquely.
Varun Patel, chief spokesperson of SPG, the parent organization spearheading the agitation also hints at an unseen hand. He has gone on record to state in a media interview that “in the last ten days, a mastermind has emerged who is misleading Hardik and using him like a pawn. We made Hardik the face of the agitation but now the mastermind is doing Hardik’s makeover. What is his motive and why he is doing it is a different issue but for the moment it is helping push our demands and we are benefitting so it is alright”, he states.
That there are powerful forces behind the scene at work, goes without saying. It will not be long before they are forced out into the open to be counted.
---
*Senior Gandhinagar-based journalist. RK Misra's blogs can be accessed at http://wordsmithsandnewsplumbers.blogspot.in/

Comments

TRENDING

The silencing of conscience: Ideological attacks on India’s judiciary and free thought

By Sunil Kumar*  “Volunteers will pick up sticks to remove every obstacle that comes in the way of Sanatan and saints’ work.” — RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat (November 6, 2024, Chitrakoot) Eleven months later, on October 6, 2025, a man who threw a shoe inside the Supreme Court shouted, “India will not tolerate insults to Sanatan.” This incident was not an isolated act but a continuation of a pattern seen over the past decade—attacks on intellectuals, writers, activists, and journalists, sometimes in the name of institutions, sometimes by individual actors or organizations.

Citizens’ group to recall Justice Chagla’s alarm as India faces ‘undeclared' Emergency

By A Representative  In a move likely to raise eyebrows among the powers-that-be, a voluntary organisation founded during the “dark days” of the Indira Gandhi -imposed Emergency has announced that it will hold a public conference in Ahmedabad to highlight what its office-bearers call today’s “undeclared Emergency.”

N-power plant at Mithi Virdi: CRZ nod is arbitrary, without jurisdiction

By Krishnakant* A case-appeal has been filed against the order of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and others granting CRZ clearance for establishment of intake and outfall facility for proposed 6000 MWe Nuclear Power Plant at Mithi Virdi, District Bhavnagar, Gujarat by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) vide order in F 11-23 /2014-IA- III dated March 3, 2015. The case-appeal in the National Green Tribunal at Western Bench at Pune is filed by Shaktisinh Gohil, Sarpanch of Jasapara; Hajabhai Dihora of Mithi Virdi; Jagrutiben Gohil of Jasapara; Krishnakant and Rohit Prajapati activist of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued a notice to the MoEF&CC, Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Gujarat Coastal Zone Management Authority, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and case is kept for hearing on August 20, 2015. Appeal No. 23 of 2015 (WZ) is filed, a...

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu.  He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Celebrating 125 yr old legacy of healthcare work of missionaries

Vilas Shende, director, Mure Memorial Hospital By Moin Qazi* Central India has been one of the most fertile belts for several unique experiments undertaken by missionaries in the field of education and healthcare. The result is a network of several well-known schools, colleges and hospitals that have woven themselves into the social landscape of the region. They have also become a byword for quality and affordable services delivered to all sections of the society. These institutions are characterised by committed and compassionate staff driven by the selfless pursuit of improving the well-being of society. This is the reason why the region has nursed and nurtured so many eminent people who occupy high positions in varied fields across the country as well as beyond. One of the fruits of this legacy is a more than century old iconic hospital that nestles in the heart of Nagpur city. Named as Mure Memorial Hospital after a British warrior who lost his life in a war while defending his cou...

New RTI draft rules inspired by citizen-unfriendly, overtly bureaucratic approach

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Department of Personnel and Training , Government of India has invited comments on a new set of Draft Rules (available in English only) to implement The Right to Information Act, 2005 . The RTI Rules were last amended in 2012 after a long period of consultation with various stakeholders. The Government’s move to put the draft RTI Rules out for people’s comments and suggestions for change is a welcome continuation of the tradition of public consultation. Positive aspects of the Draft RTI Rules While 60-65% of the Draft RTI Rules repeat the content of the 2012 RTI Rules, some new aspects deserve appreciation as they clarify the manner of implementation of key provisions of the RTI Act. These are: Provisions for dealing with non-compliance of the orders and directives of the Central Information Commission (CIC) by public authorities- this was missing in the 2012 RTI Rules. Non-compliance is increasingly becoming a major problem- two of my non-compliance cases are...

World Bank arm accused of hiding crucial report on Gujarat’s Tata Mundra power project

By A Representative   The Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has accused the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the accountability arm of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), of concealing crucial evidence related to the Tata Mundra coal power project in Gujarat during the period when the case was being heard in U.S. courts. In a press statement released on October 10, 2025, CFA said that the CAO’s final monitoring report, which was completed in 2019 but released only in September 2025, revealed that IFC had failed to take remedial action for years, even as environmental and livelihood harms to local communities worsened.

When communities lead: The story of Puttenahalli lake restoration in Bengaluru

By Alejandra Amor, Mansee Bal Bhargava  The tropical Indian ecology pushed communities to develop the art and science of rainwater collection since antiquity. Traditionally, harvesting rainwater through ponds, lakes, and wetlands formed an integral part of a holistic water system that included rivers, canals, wells, aquifers, and springs. These decentralized systems sustained irrigation, livestock, and domestic needs in rural areas, supported by generations of community water management practices embedded in both utilitarian and ritualistic values.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...