Congress Stakes Claim to Patel’s Legacy as It Reboots for Gujarat 2027

The Congress, which held its first AICC session in Gujarat in 64 years with a two-day conference in Ahmedabad on April 8 and 9, 2025, has made it clear that it is already preparing for the State Assembly election scheduled for 2027. Uncharacteristically for a party often seen as slow in gearing up for elections, it has underlined the importance of Gujarat in its electoral scheme. The party has signalled its intent by staking a claim to the legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Mahatma Gandhi, both of whom hailed from Gujarat.

On April 8, the Congress Working Committee (CWC), meeting at Sardar Patel Memorial in Shahi Baug, passed a resolution celebrating Sardar Patel’s 150th birth anniversary and projecting him as a lifelong Congressman (“our Sardar”). The BJP has long claimed to be the inheritor of Sardar Patel’s politics. The Congress, by laying claim to Patel’s legacy and positioning it against the ruling party’s politics of divisiveness, has marked out the basic contours of its ideological battle with the BJP in a State where the saffron party has ruled for 30 years and where its influence is almost hegemonic. Hitting out at the “deliberate web of lies” surrounding a supposed “conflict” between Patel and the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a resolution passed by the party said it was “determined to emulate the resoluteness of Sardar Patel” in resisting the “frenzy of religious polarisation” that was pushing the country towards an “abyss of hatred”.

In a press briefing after the CWC meeting, Jairam Ramesh, Congress secretary in-charge of communications, said Patel and Nehru were friends and worked together. He recalled that Patel was the first president of the party’s Gujarat unit when it was founded in 1920 and remained in that post for 25 years. The rhetoric was clearly aimed at countering the BJP’s propaganda of Nehru having contrived to deny Patel his due.

The CWC resolution also invoked Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy and recalled how Sardar Patel, then the Union Home Minister, banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) after Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist with known RSS links.

Deepal Trivedi, a senior journalist from Ahmedabad, said: “The Congress found it necessary to claim the Sardar’s legacy because the stalwart of the Indian freedom movement is now perceived as closer to the BJP’s politics than the Congress’. Sardar Patel was from the Patidar community, which is politically influential in the State. Patidars were once staunch supporters of the Congress. But in the last 40 years, the community has turned to the BJP, and now Patidar youngsters believe the BJP’s ‘Sardar versus Congress’ propaganda.”

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Reacting to the CWC resolution, on April 9, BJP spokesperson C.R. Kesavan said the Congress was “shamelessly faking respect for Sardar Patel” and asserted that the Congress should have named its party headquarters “Sardar Bhavan” if it truly respected him. It has long been the BJP’s strategy to try to prove that the Congress has failed to show respect for Patel. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad have often highlighted how Patel was accorded the Bharat Ratna only in 1991—41 years after his death.

The Congress, which lost power in the State in 1995, has been on a steady decline in Gujarat since Narendra Modi became Chief Minister in 2001 and the riots that followed in 2002 (see tables). The closest that it came to power was in 2017, when the Assembly election turned out to be a close shave for the BJP. With 99 out of 182 seats, the BJP’s tally dipped below 100 for the first time since 1995.

The Patidar agitation of 2015, demanding OBC status for the community, had pushed down the BJP’s tally in the 2017 election and strengthened the Congress. Hardik Patel, who was the face of the movement with his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti, was not yet a Congress member and, at 22, was too young to contest. But he mobilised votes against the BJP and in favour of the Congress, challenging the saffron party’s dominance. Two other charismatic young leaders who added wind to the Congress’ sail in 2017 were Jignesh Mevani, who became the face of Dalit assertion, and Alpesh Thakor, who spoke for OBCs. Mevani won as an Independent supported by the Congress, and Thakor won on the Congress ticket. The thrashing of a Dalit family at Una in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district in July 2016 over the skinning of a dead cow deepened Dalit anger against the BJP. The Congress in Gujarat was on a high in election year 2017, and Rahul Gandhi toured the entire State for 60 days.

Yet, in the next few years, the advantage petered out. Hardik Patel, who had joined the Congress in 2019, and Alpesh Thakor are both in the BJP now. However, Mevani, who joined the Congress in 2021, is now the party’s working president in the State.

The triple whammy

A senior Congress leader who was closely involved in the 2017 election explained why the Congress failed to win power in Gujarat despite presenting such a formidable challenge to the BJP. “Internal sabotage by some leaders, lack of organisation, and the heavy use of government machinery by the BJP are the three reasons for the Congress’ failure to oust the BJP in 2017,” he told Frontline. “It is not possible to win Gujarat without addressing at least two of these reasons.”

The Congress seems to recognise this. The fact that it is already in election mode and had opted to hold the AICC session in Gujarat reflects this understanding. Back in July 2024, soon after the parliamentary election results were out, Rahul Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha that his party would defeat the BJP in Gujarat. Trivedi explained why Gujarat is so important to the Congress: “Prime Minister Modi’s rise started from Gujarat. He will lose shine only if he loses Gujarat. The Congress understands this, and that’s why it is so interested in Gujarat.”

Speaking at Rajiv Bhavan, the Gujarat Congress office in Ahmedabad, on March 8, 2025, Rahul Gandhi said: “There are two types of people in Gujarat Congress. One, those who stand with the people, fight for them and carry forward the ideology of the Congress. The others are disconnected, do not respect the people, and they are aligned with the BJP.” But the one statement that struck a chord with Congress workers was: “If we need to take strong actions and expel those who are working with the BJP, then we should.”

Frontline asked Jignesh Mevani when such action was likely to be taken. “Wait for some more time. The Congress is going through major changes in the State. Very soon you will find those hobnobbing with the BJP will be out of the Congress,” he said.

That, surely, will be a tough call, given how fast the Congress’ organisational strength seems to be evaporating, not only in Gujarat but all over the country. Sarthak Bagchi, who teaches at Ahmedabad University, said:, “How will the party leadership find out who is close to the BJP and who is not? That’s the first question. Second, there is a buzz around some leaders that they are closely associated with the BJP, but these are the ones who mobilise crowds for party functions, even if it is only 100 or 200 people. If you throw such people out, who is going to attend your party programmes?”

When the Congress was a force to be reckoned with in Gujarat, the party had leaders with considerable resources and control over important institutions like local bodies or co-operative bodies such as district banks, sugar mills, and dairies. A large section of such leaders switched to the BJP ahead of the 2022 Assembly election and the 2024 general election. Arjun Modhwadia, for instance, with considerable clout in Porbandar district and influence over local bodies and other institutions, joined the BJP in March 2024. With his defection, the Congress lost ground in the district. Similar stories abound in other parts of Gujarat.

In Rajkot, former Mayor Ashok Dangar left the Congress to join the BJP in May 2024. The defections took a toll on the Congress’ local body election results (see Table 5) in February 2025. The BJP won 62 of the 68 municipalities, which was 15 more than what it had won in the previous election. The Congress, which had won 15 municipalities in the last election in 2018, could win only a tiny municipality in the Dwarka district. The BJP won all three bloc panchayat bodies where elections were held. The Congress bettered its show only in Junagadh, where its tally improved from one seat to 11.

The local body election results indicate that the Congress is far behind the BJP in the race for Gujarat. “We agree that our task is tough. On the ground, the BJP is superior to us. They have resources and manpower. We are lacking in both. But very soon we will bring organisational changes. These will pay off,” claimed Mevani.

An important factor in the Congress’ troubles in Gujarat is the complete washout that it faces in the cities. Even in 2017, the Congress failed to make headway in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot. Barring one seat in Ahmedabad, the BJP mopped up all the seats in these cities, which helped it to meet the Congress challenge. The Aam Adami Party’s (AAP) entry has only complicated matters. The AAP was an inconsequential player in 2017 and received only 0.1 per cent of the votes. But in 2022, it won five seats and garnered 12.82 per cent of the votes. The Congress leadership alleged that the AAP functioned as the BJP’s “B” team, but the AAP has steadily grown in Gujarat, especially in the cities. Bagchi said: “The AAP is filling the vacuum left by the Congress in Gujarati cities. It had a Delhi model to present. The Congress had nothing to offer to urban voters.”

Model or myth?

The BJP has been projecting Gujarat as a model of development, all the more so from the time when Modi started aiming for the prime ministerial post. His 2014 campaign was based on how he had transformed Gujarat. Yet serious observers have pointed out that Gujarat’s social indices are not all that great. The recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found that the number of Anganwadi centres in Gujarat fell short by 16,000 from the required number.

The report noted, “The average number of enrolled children (0-6 years of age) from 2015-16 to 2022-23 was 40.34 lakh against 77.77 lakh children as per the 2011 census. The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme fell short in providing pre-school education (PSE) to 18.8 per cent children aged 3 to 6 years enrolled in Anganwadi during the period from 2015-2023.” Another report by the CAG on “Public Health Infrastructure on Health Services” found that “a shortage of more than 25 per cent of doctors and paramedics … in 22 and 19 districts respectively”. (Gujarat has 33 districts.)

Unsatisfactory as the situation is, the opposition, mainly the Congress, has failed to capitalise on it. Mevani said the State leadership is planning to take the fight to the streets and start a campaign of protests. “We are losing the elections again and again. But that doesn’t mean issues like unemployment, inflation, and lack of infrastructure do not exist and all is well in public health, education, and sanitation. If we come out on the streets and raise these issues, the public will give us a positive response,” he said.

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The Congress, which has been out of power for 30 years, must also come up with an imaginative programme to attract the State’s youth who are just into the voting age. Gujarat’s population, according to Census 2011, is 6.04 crore. The data released by the Sample Registration Survey in 2020 show that 55 per cent of the population is under 30, and this section has only known the BJP in power. This generation, which includes Gen Z and Millennials, is potentially fertile ground for anti-incumbency. “But to catch these young voters, the Congress will have to come up with a new language of campaigning and innovative ideas,” said Bagchi.

In contrast, the BJP offers a development narrative infused with Hindu nationalism. “Whether real development is taking place or not is a matter of investigation for academics. But the BJP is creating an impression that only a government run by it can develop Gujarat and secure the interests of Gujaratis,” said Trivedi.

Political scientists have repeatedly pointed out how the RSS turned Gujarat into the country’s first Hindutva laboratory. During every election in the State, BJP leaders, including Modi and Shah, resort to communal polarisation, pitting “Hindus” against “Muslims”. This has entrenched Modi as a Hindutva mascot in popular imagination.

The Congress has not been able to counter this polarisation. Mevani said: “We accept that polarisation helps the BJP. There is only one solution for this. Keep presenting the Ram of Kabir against the BJP’s Nathuram. This is a cultural battle. It will take time. But we can win only if we remain true to our ideology.”

For the grand old party, therefore, it is a battle of both perception and organisational strength in Gujarat. Its biggest hurdle is the perception that only the BJP can safeguard the interests of the Gujarati Hindus.