He is called the Leuva Patel face of Narendra Modi—and with good reason. Last week, when BJP youth wing president Jitendra Vaghani kicked off his campaign from this urban seat, he openly flaunted the party’s Hindutva card. It didn’t matter to Vaghani that the party had chosen to ride on the ‘development’ issue this time.

“It’s a fight between dharma and adharma. If the BJP loses, Muslims in Gulf countries will burst crackers in celebration. Do you want that,” he said, setting off a round of applause.

The choice of Vaghani for this seat was a last-minute surprise sprung on the Congress’s Shaktisinh Gohil. After having announced the name of J.T. Dave, the party changed its mind and made Vaghani file his papers on the last day of nominations. This, after denying a ticket to sitting MLA Sunil Oza.

Understandably, Oza is breathing fire. He has filed his papers as an Independent and is now likely to contest on Uma Bharati’s Bharatiya Janshakti Party (BJSP) ticket. Given the frantic efforts by the BJP to stop Oza from contesting, it seems Vaghani’s Patel credentials are not enough for him to win from this seat that has a triangular caste combination—Patels, Kolis and Kshatriyas. “I have reached a point of no return. Not after this humiliation,” said Oza, sitting in his office that still bears his nameplate with the BJP’s lotus symbol.

Though Oza believes he can wrest the seat against the might of both the BJP and the Congress, he might just help Congress’s Gohil scrape through with a margin of some thousand votes. “The Keshubhai group has blessed Sunilbhai. Not all Patel votes are going to go to Vaghani,” one of Oza’s supporters said.

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