New Delhi: The Congress, which has been ruling the Diu Municipal Council for the last 15 years, has suffered a major setback. Seven out of the total 9 Congress councillors joined the BJP on Saturday. Along with the councillors, dozens of supporters have also decided to go with the BJP. After the latest defection, the number of seats of the Congress in the body has been reduced to just two. At the same time, the BJP has come to the majority with 10 councillors.
At a public meeting held at Ghoghala in Diu, seven councils formally took on the BJP. The councillors include Harish Kapadia, Dinesh Kapadia, Ravindra Solanki, Ranjan Raju Vankar, Bhagyavanti Solanki, and Bhawnag Dudhmal and Nikita Shah. Vijay Rahatkar, in charge of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman Diu and national general secretary of BJP, welcomed the councillors who have joined the party. It is noteworthy that six months ago, the administration of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu had suspended Harish Solanki, president of the Congress-ruled Diu Municipal Council. According to media reports, Rahatkar says that the councillors have joined the BJP to support PM Narendra Modi's BJP's "politics of development". The Congress has lost its majority in Diu municipal council as seven councillors left the party.
In the year 2007, the party won the election here and repeated the success in 2012, and 2017. In the 2017 elections, Congress had won 10 out of 13 seats. However, the BJP could get only 3 seats in its account. At present, Hitesh Solanki and his brother Jitendra Solanki are the only Congress councillors left. Mansukh Patel, who was vice-president, passed away in November last year. Solanki targeted Patel for switching sides of the Congress councillors. "Since 2017, when he has been appointed as administrator, Diu's politics have changed. The councillors have told me that they are being pressured to change the party or face the consequences. He has said that he does not have the power to fight against the administrator and the BJP, the way I am fighting. In such a situation, he probably had no choice but to join the BJP. Interestingly, Solanki was appointed administrator for the civic body in the Union Territory after he was removed from the post of president. Elections for the post of president and vice-president have also not been held so far.
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