Patels of US seek to imitate Hardik Patel's movement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit

GANDHINAGAR: Will it be Madison Square Garden redux next week? Maybe not, if the plans of the well-heeled Patel community in the US to show solidarity with their brethren back home are anything to go by.

The community is planning to hire luxury buses to ferry allexpenses-paid protesters to New York and California during Prime Minister Modi’s trip to vent its anger at the police action in Ahmedabad on August 25 against Patels seeking reservation under the Other Backward Classes category.

“We are expecting around 20,000 people to protest in California and 10,000 in New York when Narendra Modi comes to the US later this month,” Tejas Bakhiya, a Patel or Patidar businessman settled in Philadelphia, told ET.

The community, famous for owning a large number of motels, is also readying to host protesters from across the US. The ongoing standoff between the Patidars, who form the main support base of BJP in Gujarat, has also led to many Patel leaders of the Overseas Friends of BJP ( OFBJP) quitting the party they financed all these years.

These leaders are mounting pressure on OFBJP president Chandrakanta Patel to lead the rest of the members of the community out of the party, besides actively trying to disrupt meetings of the BJP leaders visiting the US.

However, speaking to ET, Patel said he’s not feeling any pressure. He said that he’s trying to convince NRIs planning protests to keep PM’s visits incident-free.

When asked what steps BJP is taking to counter the planned protests by the Patels in the US, the party’s foreign department chief Vijai Chauthaiwala said, “We are focussed on our event. We are receiving overwhelming support from all sections of society, including the Patel community. The Patel community is a big supporter of PM Modi, so there is no question to counter them.”

When senior BJP leaders recently tried to placate the Patel community in the US ahead of Modi’s visit, they had no answers to the hostile questions from the audience on the reservation issue. Bakhiya said at least two senior party functionaries had to leave the meetings midway at Silicon Valley last week after the audience demanded to know what the BJP was doing to placate the Patels back home.

The global convener of OFBJP, Vijay Chauthaiwale, however denied that the party leaders had to face such embarrassment. “I am not aware of any such thing,” he said.

“The Patels have opened up the doors of their motels to accommodate those who are coming to protest,” said Nirav Patel from Alabama. “I was the vice president of OBFBJP for Alabama and Georgia and have resigned recently.” He also said that the Patidars have sought refund of the money they had donated for Modi’s Madison Square event last year. “I had personally donated $10,000 and want the money back now,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bakhiya said, trusties of two temples set up by the Patidars in the US, Umia Mata Mandir in Macon Georgia and Shakti Mandir in Atlanta, have written to Prime Minister Modi and Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel seeking resolution of the reservation issue and action against the policemen responsible for the alleged atrocity on the community in Gujarat.