Gujarat leader Hardik Patel resigns from Congress

Gujarat leader Hardik Patel has resigned from Congress and its primary membership.

"Today I courageously resign from the post of Congress party and primary membership of the party. I am sure that my decision will be welcomed by all my colleagues and the people of Gujarat. I believe that after this step of mine, I will be able to work really positively for Gujarat in future," he wrote on Twitter.



This comes days after party spokesman Manhar Patel hit out against Patel for the latter's 'baseless' allegations and claims, saying that the Patidar leader never met the party's national or state leaders to discuss his issues.

"Hardik Patel is claiming that the national leaders are not meeting him, but the fact is he never sought their time to discuss his issues. He met Rahul Gandhi in Dahod recently, and yet he is unhappy and dissatisfied. He has to discuss his issues with the party leaders, and not the media," Manhar Patel said.

Before quitting, Patel, who had joined the Congress in 2019, wrote a scathing letter to party chief Sonia Gandhi, claiming the Congress "only played the role of a roadblock" over certain key issues in the country and was "merely reduced to opposing everything".

Without taking any name, he said in the letter that whenever he raised issues of the people of Gujarat, senior Congress leaders were busy checking messages on their mobile phones, and some leaders were “enjoying abroad” when the party and the country needed them.

Patel had since sometime been critical of the Congress and recently praised the BJP.

He claimed that whenever he approached senior Congress leaders on serious issues of people, they were busy scrolling messages on their mobile phones.

“The lack of seriousness about all issues is a major problem with the party's senior leadership. Whenever I met senior leaders, I always felt that they were not really interested in hearing about problems concerning the people of Gujarat, but were engrossed in what messages they had received on mobile phones and other such trivial things,” he said in the letter.

Hardik Patel had gained prominence in 2015 after he led the agitation seeking reservation for the Patidar community in the state.

He was made the Gujarat Congress working president in July 2020.