Both NCP MLAs voted for BJP in Gujarat RS battle: Congress

NEW DELHI: Both NCP MLAs in Gujarat voted for BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls that saw Ahmed Patel scamper home by securing the minimum requisite votes, Congress leaders involved in the post-result analysis have said.

Yet, some NCP leaders promptly sent out 'congratulatory' text messages to Congress leaders soon after Patel's victory, to which the Congress diplomatically said 'thanks'. NCP general secretary Praful Patel was incharge of the party's strategy for the Gujarat assembly polls.

The Congress side have for long suspected that Gujarat NCP's talk of floating a third front with JDU and Hardik Patel's outfit for the Gujarat assembly polls was aimed at splitting the anti-incumbency votes. Some feel Shankarsinh Vaghela too may join the 'third front' camp now.

The question that is engaging politicians in Delhi now is whether the two Congress rebel MLAs whose votes were declared invalid, after they showed it to Amit Shah before putting it in the ballot box, had actually made a genuine mistake or were playing out a pre-determined script.

There are enough takers for the theory that it was Congress' 'triplecrossing' game to counter BJP's 'double-crossing' plot. However, the episode may remain a mystery forever or become part of folklore on the battles for supremacy the two parties have waged.

Congress strategists also said they refused to enter into any deal-making with Vaghela when he had threatened to quit, unless he was made a PCC chief and CM candidate, as they were aware that he had entered into a deal with BJP to rock the Congress boat during the RS polls. Had he been made the PCC chief or declared the party's CM candidate, Congress would have been subjected to Vaghela's design to engineer a bigger split just before the Rajya Sabha polls.