New Delhi: As Gujarat shifts into election mode, a new young troika emerges as hope for state Congress unity – Vansda MLA Anant Patel, 42, Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani, 41, and Patidar Hardik leader Patel, 28 years old.

While Anant and Hardik are members of Congress, Jignesh is an independent lawmaker who has lent his support to the party.

Congress has been out of power in Gujarat since 1995. He won 77 of Gujarat’s 182 assembly seats in 2017.

Anant, Hardik and Mevani were seen sharing a l-stageLast week in Gandhinagar in what is described as an ‘Adivasi Satyagraha’ against the proposal Par-JAPI-Narmada River Link Project in Gujarat.

At a press conference in Delhi last Wednesday, Anant says that even though neither he nor the The Congress was against development, it could not come at the expense of the Adivasi communities.

‘The purpose of the whole’andolan‘ is to protect and save the Adivasis. So far, the Congress has held protests in Valsad, Tapi and Dang districts. We have 14 other events planned. We will only stop our protest when we are informed in writing that the river link project has been abandoned,” he noted.

In Tapi, Mevani registered his presence. Anant told ThePrint that Hardik has also pledged his support whenever needed. “Both of them are close acquaintances of mine (acché saathi hain)“, said Anant.

“First was the Sardar Sarovar dam, where none of the water from the dam goes to nearby communities. Then came the Statue of Unity in the name of Sardar Patel. Sardar Patel would be very upset that so many Adivasis were moved for a monument in his name,” Hardik said.

Read also : An eye on the Gujarat polls? Modi government suspends Par-Tapi-Narmada river link amid tribal protests

Caste equations

The three make an impressive team in terms of community affiliation – Anant, a tribal leader, Jignesh, a Dalit, and Hardik, a Patidar. These three communities together constitute about a third of the population of Gujarat.

In 2015, Hardik became the face of the Patidar agitation for the reservation, saying he would fast to death unless Anandiben Patel, then Gujarat’s chief minister, agreed to their demands. He held over 100 rallies in the state, shaking up the state’s BJP government.

“It was this Patidar community that appointed the ministers, elected the chief minister and ensured victory for the BJP in the 26 Lok Sabha seats. But if you hurt this community, the government will crumble like a chair crumbles if two of its legs are ripped from underneath,” he said at the time.

A former literature student and civil rights activist, Mevani worked closely with lawyer Mukul Sinha on the rights of sanitation workers and security guards. He then turned to law before joining the AAP.

In 2016, four Dalits were brutally beaten in Una, Gujarat, sparking national outcry and once again highlighting India’s brutal caste divisions. The incident became a turning point for Mevani: he founded the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch (RDAM), which organized a 10-day march from Ahmedabad to Una to protest the incident, and later rose as a prominent Dalit voice, fighting and winning his first election as an independent MP in 2017.

Last September, when former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar joined the Congress at the party headquarters in Delhi, it created a buzz in political circles. Mevani accompanied Kumar to the event but did not officially join the party.

Even so, the two, along with Hardik, were to form a “fiery troika” that could help boost the party’s appeal among young people. The buzz, however, soon died down and, save for the occasional press conference, Kumar largely disappeared from the action.

The last time he made headlines was in an Instagram photo in which he read a book in a room overlooking scenic hills – an image that earned the former communist leader the nickname “bourgeois of Begusarai” on social media.

Mevani and Hardik, the incumbent chairman of the Congress party’s Gujarat unit, have also kept a low profile, especially as the party shown little inclination to show them off or use them to appeal to young people.

While Kanhaiya Kumar seems to be coming to terms with his new role, Mevani and Hardik have teamed up with Anant Patel to put pressure on the ruling BJP in Gujarat.

Born in Navsari, 42-year-old Anant Patel earned his M.Sc. from Veer Narmad South Gujarat University in Surat and his BEd from RK Desai College Of Education. A social worker and grassroots Adivasi leader, he was elected MLA for Vansda in 2017 on a congressional ticket.

Anant has become the face of the movement against the Par-Tapi-Narmada river link project which plans to transfer ‘excess’ water from the Western Ghats in Maharashtra to the semi-arid regions of Saurashtra and Kutch in Gujarat.

On March 25, in protest against the river link project, the Congress gathered thousands of people and marched to the Vidhan Sabha in Gandhinagar. Several leaders were arrested during the demonstration.

In view of the polls, the Union government has decided to start the Par-Tapi-Narmada river link project hold, but he did not completely abandon the project.

Rejecting the decision to put the river link project on hold, all three claimed it was just an election gimmick ‘to fool people’ and that the project would resume once the elections were over.

However, Mevani said the very fact that the government felt compelled to stop the project was a “small victory in itself”.

Election outlook, plans for the future

With two of the assembly’s three deputies, the goal of this troika is very clear: to gather as much support as possible across the state ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections later this year.

hardick says ThePrint that the three “good friends” worked together on issues such as the Patidar movement, unemployment and women’s rights.

“We’re making concrete plans for every issue,” Patel said.

Unemployment is high on their agenda, Mevani said, because it affects everyone.

“The only thing Congress needs to focus on is rising unemployment in the state. We didn’t have permission to stage the March 25 protest, yet thousands of people showed up. That’s reflection of that,” Hardik said.

Mevani and Hardik have known each other since 2016 – they said their acquaintance turned into a friendship due to their mutual desire to give government a “hard time”.

“I knew Jignesh even before 2017. We are people from a movement and we want more people to come and join us,” Hardik said.

With Anant, it was the desire to uplift the Dalit and Adivasi communities that brought them together.

“Dalits and tribals are the poorest of the poor, the most marginalized of the lot,” Mevani said. “It is this marginalization that has led to such an organic relationship with Anant,” noted Mevani.

Two prominent central government projects – the Statue of Unity project in 2018 and the proposed Par-Tapi-Narmada project – have sparked major protests in the state’s tribal belts. Congress hopes to use this unrest to its advantage.

“Young people and activists, brought together by the Congress and the sincerity of its focus on the issues, have created the right atmosphere (mahaul) for the party to emerge victorious in the elections,” Mevani said.

There was churning in tribal pockets that he had never seen before, he added.

“That’s why the party will not only win the 28 tribal-only constituencies, but the 46 constituencies where there is a dominant tribal population,” he said.

Mevani also hastened to sack the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which, on the strength of its landslide victory in Punjab, now hopes to impose itself in Gujarat.

The AAP won 27 of 120 seats in Surat’s municipal elections last year – becoming the main opposition party in the local body – a move that came at the expense of Congress, which White.

The Par-Tapi-Narmada River Link project is not just an adivasi issue, Anant said – it is a struggle for land and forests.

“Around 6,000 schools will be destroyed by the project. This is not just a fight against the river link project, but a fight to protect our land and our jungles. We don’t want to live in concrete jungles,” he told ThePrint.

(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)

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