It took Congress old-guard Ahmed Patel to defeat Modi-Amit Shah juggernaut
After almost 10 hours of shuffling between breaking news, political developments and manoeuvres, twists and turns, charges and counter charges, statements and angry reactions, analysis and debates, India Today TV's Rahul Kanwal wound up the show driven by just one Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat at 3am. Rajdeep Sardesai had left barely a few minutes ago, to rush back home, claiming "his dog won't settle down for the night till he is back".
Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel had driven off a little while earlier from the counting centre in Gandhinagar - after snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat and quoting "Sabko sanmati de bhagwan", a line from fellow Gujarati Mahatma Gandhi's favourite song "Eshwar Allah Tero Naam".
I know Ahmed Patel so I can safely say, at that moment, he must have been mulling not what happened but what was coming next.
The rise of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo and Rahul Gandhi in Congress have been parallel narratives. Both, directly and indirectly, have led to the declining influence of Ahmed Patel - who is, on paper, still the political secretary to the Congress president.
Congresspersons admit that, over the last two years, there has been a marked shift. Earlier, anyone with a query, worry or dispute was referred to Ahmed Patel by Sonia Gandhi.
But answering to the clamour for Rahul Gandhi's coronation - preparing for the grand handover of the Congress' royal baton - Sonia Gandhi started telling them "to talk to Rahul". Decisions began to be taken. Ahmed Patel found himself kept out of the loop. Not so long ago, during the UPA government, he drew the loop.
A masterstroke gone wrong
The Rajya Sabha win must have left a strong, sweet aftertaste for him. After all, the war for the seat was part political, part personal. The Modi-Shah duo is partially right in believing that Ahmed Patel was responsible for all their troubles post the 2002 Gujarat riots, including the gruelling questioning Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, had to face by the Special Investigative Team (SIT) in March 2010 and the Supreme Court order directing Amit Shah to stay away from Gujarat till further orders in October 2010.
Patel's win is significant. The man in charge for the polls was former chief minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot, who has little chance of being projected the chief-ministerial face the next time his state votes. The man who led the Congress to present a forceful argument at the election commission that finally led to the game changing disqualification of two Congress rebels was former finance minister P Chidambaram. And at the heart of the drama, Ahmed Patel.
They are the grand old party's current old guard. And they have managed something which the now in charge, new guard led by Rahul Gandhi has failed to do.
Not through the ordinary bread-and-butter herding of MLAs or by providing suitable allurement. But by displaying the yes-we-can spirit: with the burning hunger to employ politically quick and on-the-feet manoeuvres to win. The spirit to survive without giving an inch to the opponent.
Over the next few months, the win will turn into yet another folklore stitched around Ahmed Patel. How, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah moving mountains against him, the Congress veteran managed to move MLAs, marshalled resources and micromanaged everything to kept the flock together and even hurt the enemy. Rahul Gandhi was absent as Patel battled. Between 3pm and 11.30pm, I saw worry lines straining his forehead, which I haven't ever seen in the last three decades.
On perhaps the most crucial night of Ahmed Patel's political career, Rahul Gandhi was reportedly down with viral fever (or at least that's what some Congress leaders said).
If only he had flown down to Gandhinagar to be with Patel on this night, despite the fever, what a moment it would have been when the old war horse won. It might have undone a lot of damage that was caused when the Congress lost its governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and gave up electoral opportunities in Goa, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh.
Now Patel's win poses a key question to Congress: Should it reinvent itself with the old guard in charge and the new in tow, or should it continue its efforts to create that correct but elusive old-new blend?
The Congress, perhaps, has many more lessons to learn, and minefields to flag. Shankersinh Vaghela and his group of rebels are creating doubts over the party's standing as a winning option to persist with. If the NCP has fully or partially gone with the BJP, is it not a signal that parties don't consider it a catalytic equity at the electoral bourses?
The BJP threw all its might and muscle to defeat Patel. It set the cat among the pigeons by fielding Balwant Singh Rajput, a one-time Ahmed Patel protégé, as the fourth candidate while there were just enough votes for three as first preference.
The BJP war room assessment was that Amit Shah will get 47 votes, Smriti Irani 46 and Rajput would win with 40 first preference and five surplus second preference votes.
They estimated that Patel, hit by defections, would be stuck at 43 votes. The final tally was 46 votes for Shah, 45 for Irani, 39 for Rajput and 44 for Patel - who won with just one spare vote.
The win was orchestrated not by the Congress party, but by Patel - the nail-biting finish crafted by Patel's management and political skills. During the debate, I couldn't avoid the temptation of saying that Patel's win in Gujarat was similar to what Captain Amarinder Singh did in the 2017 Punjab Assembly elections.
Take, for example, what Patel did as he faced BJP's poachers. Some had flown the coup. He got 44 MLAs together in a swift move and flew them to Bangalore. There he put the MLAs under the protection of state minister DK Shivakumar.
Shivakumar is no political saint. He has been found on the wrong side of law many a time. But Ahmed Patel had, during his long political career, cultivated many Shivakumars.
Recently, Patel was instrumental in Shivakumar becoming the head of the state Congress GST committee for formulating a Karnataka-specific campaign against shortcomings in the one tax for all of India.
The Centre was aware of the Shivakumar-Patel connection. The income-tax raid at the resort dug-out of Gujarat MLAs against Shivakumar was a warning shot. In Delhi, the Congress leaders who had distanced themselves from party president Sonia Gandhi and her political secretary's Rajya Sabha endeavour had to quickly jump in to defend the MLAs, Patel and Shivakumar.
Patel knows how to turn adversity to his advantage
A quick scrutiny of the Rajya Sabha poll result in Gujarat gives ample evidence for the kind of effort Patel mobilised to counter the Amit Shah machine, much like the effort to defeat him. Patel won with 44 votes - a win technically made possible by a sharp margin of 0.5. At the heart of the win, are five MLAs who may have altered the verdict or game plans.
If they had stuck to party lines or the political lines, the verdict could have been different.
On August 8, the Congress filed two pleas for the rejection of votes by two of its MLAs, Bhola Bhai Gohil of Jasdan and Raghav Bhai Patel of Jamnagar rural with the EC over the violation of voting procedures.
The charge was that the MLAs had shown their ballot papers under the open voting system to BJP president Amit Shah. The law says that MLAs can only show their vote to the agent authorised by the party. The Congress plea was initially rejected by the returning officer. But the Congress, though slow to get off the block, knocked at the doors of the election commission.
The full bench of the election commission started a meeting which was interrupted many times. First, the BJP armada moved in, led by finance and defence minister Arun Jaitley with at least six ministers in tow.
They claimed that votes can't be recalled once the total tally of valid votes is finalised. Then Congress, led by P Chidambaram came in, citing a Supreme Court verdict in the Kuldip Nayar case, saying the same law had led to the disqualification of a vote by Congress MLA in Haryana last year.
The votes of the two rebel Congress MLAs were invalidated by the Election Commission.
Subsequently, the strength of the electoral college for the three Gujarat Rajya Sabha seats with four candidates came down to 174 from 176. Reducing the requirement of first preference votes to 43.5 for Ahmed Patel.
Now Bhola Bhai Gohil and Raghav Bhai Patel were Congress rebel Shankersinh Vaghela's men. The BJP was counting on them to vote. If they voted for the BJP, why did they show the ballot to someone they weren't supposed to? Did the Ahmed Patel group manage them to do what they were asked to, and still sabotage their vote?
Raghav Bhai Patel, who is a Leuva Patidar, started out as a taluka unit president in Dhrol in 1978 while Gohil's first election was from the Jasdan Taluka Panchayat in 2000.
Their suspect conduct doesn't bear good news for the BJP. Gohil belongs to the Koli community. The BJP could have cashed in on his caste origins to field him from his constituency and wrest it from the Congress. That plan has to be redrawn now.
Chhotubhai Vasava is JDU MLA from Jhagadiya constituency in Bharuch district, Ahmed Patel's home turf. He is a six-time legislator and his party is known by his name, not the other way round. After voting, he was emphatic - "I have voted for Ahmed Patel." But his party had asked him to vote for BJP candidates. Why did he defy the whip? My sources tell me Ahmed Patel is behind it. Dhari MLA Nalin Rotadiya was part of the GPP that had merged with the BJP. He was a supporter of the Patidar quota stir. He voted against the BJP. He had the choice of NOTA. But he too defied the party whip, to Ahmed Patel's benefit.
The conduct of these MLAs shows that BJP was not alone in playing the game of allurement for a political switch. Ahmed Patel, the old Congress crisis manager, too was equally active.
The BJP's plan was elaborate, unfolding like a war game. The first move came in the form of senior Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela revolting against his party leadership.
Six Congress MLAs quit the party, bringing down its strength in Gujarat Assembly from 57 to 51. The buzz was that Vaghela had the support of seven more congress MLAs.
The battle reached a feverish pitch on Tuesday with the BJP president Amit Shah, an MLA in Gujarat Assembly, personally marshalling the preparations along with Union minister Smriti Irani and general secretary in charge of the state, Bhupender Yadav, who had played a key role in the party's Rajya Ssabha victory in Jharkhand. Yet, after many twists and turns, Patel still won.
The BJP was desperate for victory. Since Modi shifted to Delhi from Gandhinagar in 2014, Gujarat BJP has had a choppy ride.
The Patidar caste, the traditional support base of the BJP since the '90s, has been on the warpath. Failing to convince the dominant aggressive caste, the BJP government tried a crackdown on Patidar leader, Hardik Patel.
He was imprisoned for no less than treason. Patidars are sulking.
The BJP has yet to find an answer to silence the "chhattriya" movement against the sale of illegal liquor, spearheaded by Alpesh Thakur.
Dalit voters too aren't really happy with the government, incensed by the inhuman flogging of members of their community by cow vigilantes in Una in 2016, and the silence their demands to implement education and job quotas have been met with.
The BJP needed to push the Congress against the wall, weaken it with Ahmed Patel's defeat to climb over the anti-incumbency ladder in the state during their 20 years in power.
The war-like effort to defeat Patel was aimed at underlining the insecurities and jitters in the faction-ridden Congress. If the grand old party's MLAs had en masse defected during the Rajya Sabha poll, the BJP would have earned a chance to call the Congress a sinking ship. And present itself as the better option.
This issue is deeper than what's visible at the surface.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh's "The sultanate has gone, but we behave as if we are sultans still" remark itself showcases it. At a time when the Congress is living the first half of its worst-ever political decade - Ahmed Patel's loss would have heightened the "Congress is haemorrhaging" perception, making the party "unattractive" for those who are in it or those who want to join it for a steady career and a long association.
Attacking Ahmed Patel was the same as attacking Sonia Gandhi and the Congress to show that the first family is now so weak that it can't ensure a win for its Man Friday.
Shattering the halo would have been proof for cadres not just in Gujarat, but across that the country that the Gandhis -despite their legacy and enigma - are mere mortals.
The BJP evidently tried to depose Patel. It lost a chance to win a Rajya Sabha seat and an opening for laying the road for the game plan for the Gujarat Assembly polls.
The old war horse Patel took some body blows, but did manage deliver a punch on the BJP's nose. The BJP will go back to the drawing board for the Gujarat elections and, under Shah, try to strengthen its weak links.
The win may not lead to a sudden rise in Ahmed Patel's standing in the party but it will ensure a nudge-nudge campaign within the party that the old guard can't be relegated to a "margdarshak mandal" as the BJP has done to the likes of LK Advani and MM Joshi; that fighting and winning against the Modi-Shah electoral juggernaut are ideas which have not yet been demonetised.