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Gujarat CM offers to quit on Facebook. Twitter accepts it eagerly

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DailyBiteAug 01, 2016 | 19:17

Gujarat CM offers to quit on Facebook. Twitter accepts it eagerly

Is it a bizarre promotion of "Digital India" as some witty political observers have suggested? Perhaps not.

But Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel's resignation post, as a Facebook update, is the hottest news of the day, with the BJP Parliamentary Committee apparently looking at it at present, according to the stream of news reports online.

Anandiben Patel, who would soon be 75, nevertheless pegged her "voluntary resignation" on the advancing age, carefully bypassing the volatile week of all-round protests across the western state over continuing atrocities on Dalits in Narendra Modi's home turf.

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In a letter posted on her Facebook page, Patel, who took charge as Gujarat’s first woman chief minister in May 2004 after then CM Narendra Modi was elected to the Lok Sabha, has said that she had two months earlier sought to resign from the party to give “enough time to the new incumbent to prepare for important events like the upcoming Vibrant Gujarat summit”.

“For the last some time there has been a tradition in the party that those who attain the age of 75, voluntarily retires from the post. I will attain the age of 75 in November,” the state’s first woman chief minister, who succeeded Narendra Modi on May 22, 2014, said in a Facebook post.

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“Two months ago I had requested the party to relieve me from the post and today also through this letter, I request the party to relieve me of the post,” Patel said.

“I am asking the party to relieve me two months in advance as the new chief minister will require the time to work, when the state is going to face elections in 2017 and an important event like Vibrant Gujarat Summit to be held in January,” Patel said.

“It (the rule of 75) is a good thing and it will give a chance to young leaders to come up,” she added.

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Anandiben Patel resigns as Gujarat CM. 

This harping on her age is being read as paying heed to the "unwritten convention" in the BJP, espoused by PM Modi himself,that those reaching the age of 75 should vacate their public offices. Recent instances include Najma Heptullah, the former minority affairs minister.

However, keeping up the pretences, her "resignation letter" is doing the rounds in BJP's Parliamnetary Board, headed by the party national president Amit Shah. Though Shah has not yet officially confirmed whether he has accepted or rejected Anandiben Patel's offer to quit as Gujarat CM, that not a leaf would move without the BJP high command's nod is a known fact.

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The national discourse has been completely overridden by vocal protests both within Gujarat and outside of it, and especially on social media, in the wake of the lynching of four Dalits - all tanners who skin cattle carcasses for a living - by cow vigilante groups.

Before the Dalit agitation, vociferous protests by Patidars (led by the young leader Hardik Patel) had rocked the state, with many political and non-political voice asking for the CM's resignation.

However, this time, it seems the BJP top brass has been forced to show her the early exit.

Political rivals, particularly Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP leaders like Ashutosh have latched on to Patel's resignation as a verdict of Gujarat's failed politics of upper caste Hindu appeasementa nd anti-Dalit, anti-Muslim practices.

It must be remembered that Assembly polls are due in Gujarat in late 2017 and AAP is already making a good headaway into this predominantly BJP stronghold.

Anandiben Patel had been already targeted for BJP's miserable performance in the December 2015 rural civic bodies polls with the opposition Congress making significant inroads.

Both mainstream and social media have been rife with speculations for a while now, and the news of Patel resigning only confirms what many senior jounalists and political commentators have been indicating of late.

However, many voices of reason are upset that Patel's resignation is being window-dressed to look like an age-related voluntary retirement, with BJP intending to brazen it out once again with stone-cold caste calculations and without changing its tack or making any introspection whatsoever regarding its exclusionary politics.

Last updated: August 01, 2016 | 19:17
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