OBC ire, farmers’ stir make new Gujarat BJP chief’s road ahead rocky

It's over 10 days since Jagdish Panchal took over as the president of the BJP's Gujarat unit, and the road is already looking rather bumpy for him.

For starters, the party's choice of Panchal, an OBC leader from the minority Vishwakarma caste, hasn’t gone down well with dominant OBC castes. Making it worse, the state’s Saurashtra region is witnessing an AAP-led farmers’ movement that's seeing the participation of dominant OBC groups.

This puts Panchal in the tricky position of appeasing the same people who are opposing his leadership. The path ahead for the three-time MLA is proving to be thorny.

Thorn in the flesh?

On October 4, Panchal was elected unopposed as the state BJP president. His appointment, per political analysts, was intended as a strategic move to consolidate support among the state’s OBC voter base ahead of the local body polls in early 2026 and the Assembly polls in late 2027.

The state leadership, across caste lines, seems to have accepted the leadership of Panchal, an OBC MLA from the Patidar-dominated Nikol constituency in Ahmedabad.

Also read: BJP appoints Jagdish Vishwakarma as Gujarat state president

The decision, however, hasn’t gone down well with dominant OBC groups in Saurashtra like the Kolis (the largest OBC group constituting 24 per cent of Gujarat’s electorate), Thakors, and Ahirs. They see it as mere “tokenism” considering the marginal presence – one or two per cent of OBCs – of Vishwakarmas in the state.

For over a month, senior BJP leaders belonging to OBC communities like Patidars, Kolis, Thakors, and Ahirs had been lobbying for the post of state president, only to lose it to Panchal.

Saurashtra visit

Panchal, who is currently on an eight-day tour of the state – customary for new party presidents – is likely to witness some friction from these groups when he visits Saurashtra at the end of his trip that began on October 10.

His Saurashtra visit also comes in the backdrop of AAP’s farmers’ movement in the region, which the party resumed aggressively post the Navratri festival. The party is protesting against the ‘Kadara Pratha’ system under which BJP-controlled Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) allegedly force farmers to sell their produce below the Minimum Support Price (MSP).

On October 12, a Kisan Mahapanchayat organised by AAP at Botad district of Saurashtra turned violent when police resorted to lathi charge and lobbed several rounds of tear gas at protesters. Later, an FIR was lodged against 85 people, including AAP workers and local farmers attending the event.

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“The issue began on October 10 when a few local farmers refused to sell their crops at a lower price at Botad Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC). This is the time when farmers harvest their cotton and groundnut and take it to the APMC for selling at MSP. But, since the BJP won at the APMC polls across the state, their APMC heads have been imposing a system that is locally called Kadara Pratha. It is an exploitative process that involves unauthorised crop buying outside the regulated system of APMCs,” Isudan Gadhvi, AAP’s Gujarat president, told The Federal.

“The BJP committee members have been allowing outside agents to buy a certain quantity of crops at a lower rate while the APMC buys a portion at MSP. The farmers have no choice but to sell at a lower price after being told that their crops are of lower quality,” Gadhvi says.

Kisan Mahapanchayat turns violent

Gadhvi said while the party had planned a Kisan Mahapanchayat in Botad on October 12 to raise the issue of Kadara Pratha at the APMC there, the district administration denied permission for the rally at the last minute and put some leaders on house arrest.

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“The Kisan Mahapanchayat is a series of ground events that we have been conducting at each taluka across Saurashtra since August this year. We have been raising issues faced by farmers at these events, and farmers have been attending in huge numbers. The public gathering at Botad was planned to raise the issue of Kadara Pratha, which is rampant in Botad APMC. However, we were told at the last minute that permission for the meeting was denied by the district administration. While some of our leaders, like Reshma Patel, were put on house arrest, others who managed to reach Botad or even nearby areas were detained,” Gadhvi told The Federal.

He said the party has planned a statewide public gathering on October 30 as a mark of protest.

Herculean tasks for Panchal

The Saurashtra region of Gujarat comprises 11 of the 34 districts in the state and is dominated by various OBC communities who form around 40 per cent of the state’s electorate. Agrarian communities like Kolis, Rabaris, and Ahirs dominate the region.

And, at a time when dominant OBC communities like Kolis and Ahirs have already been miffed with Panchal’s appointment, he will have a hard time cajoling them over the Kadara Pratha issue and the Centre’s move to exempt 11 per cent import duty on raw cotton until December 31, when he visits Saurashtra, say political experts.

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“Most of the OBC communities in the Saurashtra region used to vote for the Congress until their loyalty shifted towards the BJP from the 2019 Parliamentary polls onwards," said Ghanshyam Shah, a political analyst. "Now the BJP has to maintain its popularity amongst the OBCs. Choosing Jagdish Panchal, an OBC leader, as state president was a step towards the same."

'Mere tokenism'

"But choosing Panchal has failed to make the OBC communities happy. Panchal belongs to the Vishwakarma sub-community amongst the OBCs who comprise around one to two per cent of the total OBC population in Gujarat," Shah told The Federal. "Many dominant communities like Kolis, who are the largest amongst the OBC and form around 24 per cent of the state’s electorate, and Ahirs, who form a significant population in Porbandar, Jamnagar, Dwarka, Junagadh, and Morbi, see this move as a mere tokenism,” said Ghanshyam Shah, a political analyst of Gujarat.

“Adding to that, there has been a major upheaval amongst the farmers primarily owing to the corruption at APMCs and the Centre’s decision to exempt the 11 per cent import duty on raw cotton until December 31, 2025. A majority of the agrarian communities across Saurashtra are OBCs, and this will add to the disgruntlement of the communities against the BJP," he added.

"With the local polls coming up in early 2026 and then the state polls soon after, the ire of OBCs can prove to be detrimental to the BJP. In the 2017 Assembly polls, it was agrarian distress and OBC anger that had reduced the BJP to 99 seats,” Shah further said.

Allegiance shift

On October 9, people from the Koli community gathered in Rajkot in huge numbers to protest against their exclusion from BJP party posts and the government.

The leaders of various Koli sub-groups said that despite supporting the party for years, the community has not received a single Assembly ticket in Saurashtra nor landed any significant posts in the cabinet. They later met Congress’s Bharatsinh Solanki, who belongs to the same community.

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“We have to decide our political allegiance carefully in the next election. Our community leaders from six constituencies in Saurashtra met Congress leader Bharatsinh Solanki to discuss our next move. There was a time when Gujarat had a chief minister – Madhavsinh Solanki – from the Koli community. Now we have lost our political importance despite being one of the largest communities of the state,” Ranchod Udreja, a leader of the Koli community who led the protest meeting told The Federal.

“Despite years of loyalty, we have neither representation in the cabinet nor within the BJP party. After several representations by Koli leaders, BJP chose a candidate from the Vishwakarma community and not from the majority communities. We are considering joining a party that will give our community its due representation,” Udreja said.

Wooing back miffed OBCs

Panchal’s task of wooing the OBC communities also becomes more crucial at a time when the two other major parties in the state, the Congress and the AAP, also have OBC leaders heading the outfits. Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee chief Amit Chavda and AAP’s state president Isudan Gadhvi both belong to OBC communities.

“Jagdishbhai (Panchal) has a difficult task ahead of him. After returning from his state tour, he has to choose the core team of the party that will work directly under him. Multiple Patidar and OBC leaders who were eyeing the post of the party president are unhappy. They are quiet now, but if the Patidar-OBC caste dynamics aren’t balanced while choosing the core team, the discord might come to the fore. We cannot afford to alienate these two communities with the local polls knocking at the door,” said a BJP leader from Gandhinagar.

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Fragmented lot

The task to keep the OBCs united becomes even more challenging for the BJP, especially when the community in the Saurashtra region is essentially a fragmented one.

“Neither caste polemics nor the occupational issues of largely agrarian and fishing communities of the Saurashtra region have traditionally favoured the BJP," says Indira Hirway, an author based in Gujarat.

"The Saurashtra region has a complex social caste dynamic. Although OBC communities form a majority in the region, they have always been in conflict with each other. Kolis and Patidars have historically been in a political power conflict, Bharwads (sub-group of Maldharis) have a feud with Darbars. Ahirs don’t see eye to eye with Kharvas (a fishing community) along the coastal districts. This is the reason the region remained largely unaffected by the communal riots of 2002. Apart from a few pockets, Saurashtra remained unpolarised post 2002, and the BJP could not unite the OBCs under one umbrella comprising Hindus. Years later, the BJP has gained electoral hold in the region by coopting Congress leaders, but it still faces the ground issues,” Hirway adds.

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“The anger of the OBC communities is intricately related to agrarian issues and issues of fishermen in Saurashtra. It will be difficult to woo the OBCs just by electing a state president from the community. Besides, Jagdish Panchal is a leader from Central Gujarat, and it is left to be seen if he is accepted by the community in the Saurashtra region,” she says.