Capital punishment: Amarsinh heads delhi
By - Deepal Trevedie

Less than 24 hours after the victory, Gujarat Congress has decided to complain against "cynical party workers who tried hard to ensure the defeat of their own party men" with Gujarat Congress president Amarsinh Chaudhry having decided to go to Delhi to complain to national president Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.

Congress stumped the BJP by winning the Sabarmati Vidhansabha and retaining the Sabarkantha Loksabha seats, the results of which were announced on Saturday.However, the Congress is "shocked" at the way some party workers have tried to threaten the victory chances of their own party’s official candidates.

Mr. Chaudhry confirmed that he will be soon flying to Delhi to have an audience with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and Congress incharge Mr. Kamalnath and draw his attention to "unscrupulous practices of our own partymen." Mr. Chaudhry spoke to this newspaper at length and admitted that the Congress had a very tough time in fighting the elections because of skeptics who were "hell bent on spoiling the situation."

Without mincing words, Mr. Chaudhry said that Sabarkantha, the tribal belt, had 80,000 minority votes which have been the traditional vote bank. "Our own party men worked hard and schemed and in the end the Congress lost out on 43,000 Muslim votes here."

"We were lucky to have won but then our own party men have played dirty. This is very sad but true," Mr. Chaudhry said. In fact, without mincing words, Mr. Chaudhry stressed that he was going to name former Rajyasabha MP Irshad Mirza who has played "dirty politics with his own party."

"I have enough evidence to prove how Mr. Mirza has worked to abhor the chances of Congress candidate Madhusudan Mistry. By God’s grace, Mistry has won but Mr. Mirza’s activities need to be mentioned to the High Command," the party president told this newspaper. State president Chaudhry, who claims that he has never "even once" complained about any dissidence or parallel meetings to the High Command in last three months after he became the GPCC president says that, "this is a very serious matter and it is my duty to enlighten the party high command of what goes in Gujarat Congress."

According to Mr. Chaudhry, Mr. Mirza has been responsible for cutting into minority votes in Sabarkantha by working out independent candidates who contested against Mr. Mistry. "Instead of helping the Congress candidate to strengthen his hold, Mr. Mirza ensured and encouraged Muslims to file candidature against Madhusudan Mistry, the official candidate and these Muslims contested as Independents and ate into the traditional Congress vote bank." One such Muslim candidate, Sabirbhai walked away with 27,089 votes.

Another Fajlu Rehman Pathan got 12,424 votes and Ayubkhan Pathan got 2,513 votes. "The Congress lost out on over 43,000 votes because of Irshad Mirza’s politics and we have written complaints to substantiate this," Mr. Chaudhry said. Irshad Mirza was not available for comments. Similarly, Narhari Amin, who won the Sabarmati constituency for the Congress after a gap of 16 years, says that he has fought a lonely battle.

"By God’s grace I have won but I know my own party men have worked against me." Mr. Amin told this newspaper that he was going to put his grievances in writing and forward it to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Mr. Kamal Nath and Mr. Ahmed Patel naming all the persons who "openly worked against him in Sabarmati." Mr. Amin said that all of them belonged to a specific faction which has been always against him and his political mentors. "I am going to specifically name Vishnu Patel and Surendra Rajput but there are many more too."

Republished from The Asian Age