AHMEDABAD: The signs were really ominous for Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel a day after he filed his nomination seeking a fifth term to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, as the party’s chief whip in the state assembly , Balwantsinh Rajput, resigned as an MLA and was declared by the BJP as its third candidate for the Upper House, triggering a spate of resignations by MLAs from the party and assembly . Later in the evening, he joined BJP in presence of party president Amit Shah, himself a first-time Rajya Sabha candidate from Gujarat along with cabinet minister Smriti Irani who is seeking her second term. Along with him, two other Congress MLAs, Tejashree Patel and P I Patel, too joined BJP after submitting their resignations to the Speaker, Ramanlal Vora. “I was extremely fed up with groupism within Congress,” Rajput told mediamen explaining the move.

Shah told MLAs to take utmost care while voting for RS candidates even as he hinted that more Congress legislators are likely to switch over in coming days.

Tejashree is an MLA from Viramgam, the native town of Patidar leader Hardik Patel. Even though this is not a Patel stronghold, Tejashree’s move reflects that she does not fear a backlash from her own community .

Elections are due on August 8 which allows Shah enough time to prod some Congress MLAs to cross over for his giant-killing mission. Apparently , most rebels are being offered BJP tickets in coming assembly pollss to be held in November. Sources said about17 or18 Congress MLAs out of a total of 57 in the 182-member house are likely to accept . That Rajput is a close relative of Shankersinh Vaghela, Leader of Opposition in the state assembly who left the Congress last week, leaves little doubt about who is conspiring against Patel.Rajput’s son is married to Vaghela’s grand-daughter and the wedding was attended by Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister in late 2013.

Three Rajya Sabha seats have fallen vacant and the field now has four candidates, paving for an all-out battle which may split the Congress down the middle.With many Congress MLAs not taking telephone calls from party leadership, anxiety was growing in the main opposition party which appears in disarray after the recent presidential polls when nearly a dozen MLAs indulged in cross-voting. If all 182 MLAs (BJP has 121) were to vote in Rajya Sabha polls, any candidate getting 46 votes stands to win.

However, with the spate of resignations, this magical figure is likely to come down. The BJP , after ensuring that the required number of votes are cast in favour of Amit Shah and Smriti Irani, can transfer surplus votes to Rajput, besides giving him second-preference votes in ballots which are cast in favour of Shah and Irani.