The Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel threw caution to the wind and tore into Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its chief’s hometown Mansa, by going ahead with their planned rally on Saturday, despite being denied the permission by the local administration and the police.
Targeting BJP, Hardik pointed out the atrocities committed against the Patidar by the incumbent government. He reiterated that Patidars should not forget, how the BJP government treated them during the reservation agitation in 2015 where innocent young people lost their lives. He appealed to vote against the BJP government.
Hardik in his speech targeted the BJP top brass from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and BJP President Amit Shah, whose hometown is Mansa.
Despite the arrangements made by the administration and massive police deployment with barricades at all entry points of the Mansa town, a crowd of over 30,000 people attended the rally addressed by Hardik Patel.
The permission for the rally was denied on the basis of its location being in the heart of the town near Chandrasar Talav, Mansa, as it would have led to traffic issues. However, Hardik and his party leaders had rejected the offer to shift the rally at another location and entered the city with a huge contingent of cars.
On the ‘sex-CD’ issue, Hardik questioned the BJP government on spending crores of rupees on bringing out the CD containing private moments of a 23-year-old youth, when the need of the hour was to give a performance report of their party during their rule of 22 years in Gujarat. He accused the BJP of targeting him, as in a similar manner, they had framed Sanjay Joshi, the widely popular BJP leader when they wanted to sidetrack him to keep him out of the way of then CM Narendra Modi.
Hardik attacked BJP’s development model and questioned their policies on improvements related to education infrastructure, farmers income, employment opportunities for youth in the region, land holdings of farmers.
Hardik also accused the BJP government of functioning only for a chosen strata of people, which include the industrialists and friends of PM Modi and Amit Shah.
The PAAS leader talked of all the enticements that he had been offered to give up his fight for Patidar reservation and committed in front of the crowd that he will not give up the challenge and want the community to support him.
Hardik also questioned BJP of having double standards as they had given seats to all turncoats of various parties. He primarily targeted PAAS rebels Varun Patel, Reshma Patel, Amrish Patel, Ketan Patel and Chirag Patel who were all prominent PAAS leaders and have recently joined the BJP.
Hardik urged the gathering to give a befitting reply to the BJP government which he said was deeply entrenched in corruption, arrogance, greed, and nepotism for which they needed to be punished.