They also repeatedly chanted Hardik’s name, who was the face of the Patidar movement that rocked Gujarat a year ago, and played a part in Anandiben Patel’s resignation.
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Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted asking if the developments in Surat was a sign of the BJP losing Gujarat, which has been its bastion for over a decade.
Posters comparingBharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah to Reginald Edward Harry Dyer – the British army officer responsible for the 1919 Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar – have cropped up in Patidar-dominated areas in Surat, ahead of the political leader’s visit to the city.
The crowd started chanting “Hardik, Hardik” as Shah and Union minister Purshottam Rupala was speaking on the stage.
In a Facebook post, Hardik had asked Amit Shah to stay away from the Patel community and said that the agitation for reservation won’t stop till he was alive.
The party had expected a strong presence of the Patel community at the event, to affirm that the Patidars are with them in the run up to the 2017 Gujarat assembly elections.
The function at the nerve centre of the OBC agitation is being seen as a show of strength by the BJP to counter the agitation led by Patel, who is in a six-month exile in Rajasthan’s Udaipur as per the bail conditions approved by the Gujarat high court in connection with two sedition cases against him.
The ruckus started even before the commencement of the function with the Patel quota agitators raising slogans like “Jai Sardar, Jai Patidar” and hailing Hardik, even as they damaged furniture at the venue and flung chairs in air.
While Shah wound up within four minutes, Rupani spoke only for three minutes. But few would have guessed that things would go out of control there.
Though police detained several members of Patidar community, the protest continued.
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Patels, a traditional BJP supporters, have fallen out with the saffron party after the state’s BJP government ordered a crackdown against them during their agitation previous year.
