JAIPUR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2020 Pages 12 l 3.00
RNI NO. RAJENG/2019/77764 VOL 2 l ISSUE NO. 170
AHMED PATEL 1949 - 2020
END Sanjeev Srivastava
A
ERA
hmed Patel was a quintessential politician. He was wedded to Congress’s ideology and in everything he did these last few decades he always kept the party’s interest in mind. He was old school in the sense that he never nursed a grudge, forget enmity! If it helped his leader and the Congress, he would be willing to sup with the Devil. He was the Mr. Pragmatic of Indian politics with contacts cutting across party lines. Though he was picked up as a
parliamentary secretary by Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980s, Ahmed Bhai really blossomed as Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary. She reposed complete faith in him and from 2004-2014, Patel was perhaps the most powerful man in the country. His voice was seen, heard and obeyed as a diktat from the Congress President. Seldom did anything substantive or substantial happen in the power corridors without a nudge or a nod from this otherwise unassuming, limelight shunning politician whose credo, it seems, was discretion. For years he preferred going about in an Esteem (a gleaming
Merc was always in his portico though) and it was easier to miss than notice 23 Mother Teresa Crescent Road (his official bungalow for nearly three decades). The house did not even have Ahmed Patel’s nameplate and the outside lights were almost never switched on and no two visitors were ever given an appointment which could result in their running into each other. It was discretion bordering on darkness, giving Ahmed Bhai’s persona an added edge of secrecy. And with him have been buried countless secrets. Congress today has nobody who can come close to Ahmed bhai’s famed deal & match making skills.
There is no one else who can also fill in his boots as a treasurer. Also there appears no one else in the party who can even remotely match the political acumen and guile of the BJP stalwarts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Home Minister, Amit Shah. It’s really the end of an Era in the Congress. More specifically, the end of the Sonia Gandhi era in the Congress. The change and churn which is now inevitable will be the cause of consternation amongst many. And for some, who have waited for their turn in the sidelines, this churn is likely to be a harbinger of hope.