Shweta Bhatt to take on CM Narendra Modi’s might in Maninagar

Suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s court battle against chief minister Narendra Modi has grown in proportions and has now spilled over to the political arena too. His 48-year-old wife, Shweta, a trained Odissi dancer and lawyer-turned-homemaker until now, is going to take on the might of 3-term chief minister Narednra Modi in his fortress of Maninagar.

Interestingly, 10 years after the communal violence of 2002 that horrified the world, the riots will once again surface as a top issue, at least in Maninagar. Bhatt’s claim to fame in recent times has been his allegations against Modi regarding the chief minister’s alleged orders to the bureaucracy and the police to go easy on riotous mobs after the atta ck on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra.

And if there are communal innuendos in a poll campaign, can Modi be left behind? He rendered Congress speechless with his indirect hammering of his voters with the idea that if Congress comes to power in Gujarat, a Muslim, Ahmed Patel, will be the chief minister.

In his speech at Isanpur on Friday before filing of his nomination, Modi claimed, “They (Congress) have secretly decided to make Ahmed Patel chief minister. They have no Patel other than Ahmed Patel.”

Congress leaders are seeing this as a very subtle stoking of the communal flames by giving the impression that a Muslim leader is Congress’s CM candidate. This time, both the BJP and the Congress have, till now, carefully tried to avoid this subject in the political arena. Modi’s unexpected attack, however, throws up many questions about the Congress’s poll strategy which many leaders in the party are also at a loss to explain.

On the other hand, the process of Shweta’s candidature itself was intriguing. The buzz that she would be contesting the polls on a Congress ticket had been doing the rounds for a long time, but most Congress functionaries were kept in the dark.

Even though Sanjiv Bhatt knows most political leaders because of his postings, the buzz is that the link for this political match is Delhi-based activist Shabnam Hashmi, who has shifted base to Ahmedabad in the last few months.

For long, Hashmi has been considered to have an influence over Sonia Gandhi and others in the Congress High Command. When Sanjiv was arrested, she immediately came to Shweta’s side and was instrumental in getting the attention of the national media which kept the pressure on the state machinery in the case.

In the last few months, Hashmi and GPCC president Arjun Modhwadia presented Shweta’s case to the Congress high command. Considering the sensitive nature of the issue, the candidate for the seat was among the last to be finalized and announced.

It is perhaps the first instance of a bureaucrat in proxy, let alone an IPS officer’s wife, is taking on a sitting chief minister in a poll battle. In 2007, Congress had fielded their veteran leader Dinsha Patel who lost by a margin of 87,161 votes against Modi. For starters, Shweta is very popular outside Gujarat and through Friday was among the most trending topics on Twitter. However, Maninagar is already considered a lost battle for her but at least it will liven up the campaigning in the coming weeks.