AAP’s Gujarat vice-prez expelled; Vashram Sagathiya claims he resigned 2 days ago, may return to Congress

A day after he was seen at the official event of Rajya Sabha MP Shaktisinh Gohil assuming charge as the head of Congress party in Gujarat, Aam Aadmi Party’s Vashram Sagathiya was summarily expelled from the party on Tuesday. Sagathiya, the vice-president of AAP’s Gujarat state unit, had deserted Congress and joined AAP in the run up to the Assembly election in Gujarat last year. However, Sagathiya claimed that he had already resigned from the party two days ago and hinted that he might return to the Congress.

In a letter to Sagathiya on Tuesday, Manoj Sorathiya, AAP’s organisational secretary for Gujarat, informed that he had been expelled from the party due to anti-party activities. “You are hereby informed that some workers have been making constant complaints against you, saying you, by abusing your position in the party, has been working against the party. Upon enquiry, it emerged that those complaints of workers are true and therefore, as a disciplinary action, you are hereby relieved of all party positions. Your membership is also revoked herewith,” reads Sorathiya’s letter to Sagathiya and shared by the AAP’s media wing with journalists.

AAP’s action against Sagathiya, who was among the prominent Dalit faces of the party, comes after he was seen at Shaktisinh Gohil’s inauguration as Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president in Ahmedabad on Monday. Sagathiya had contested Assembly election last December from Rajkot Rural seat as an AAP candidate and had secured 71,201 votes out of a total of 2.24 lakh votes polled. However, he lost to Bhanu Babariya of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who cornered 1.19 lakh votes. Congress’ Suresh Bathwar had managed to get only 29,175 votes and came in the third place.

Sagathiya had contested Assembly election from the same seat in 2017 as a Congress candidate and lost narrowly to Lakhabhai Sagathiya of the BJP. While Lakhabhai had polled 92,114 votes, the Congress candidate had got 89,935.

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Sagathiya was elected to the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) for three consecutive terms — in 2010, 2015 and 2021 as a Congress candidate and had served as the Leader of Opposition twice. In the 2021 RMC election, he was one of the only four Congress candidates to win the election as the ruling BJP swept 68 out of 72 seats of the RMC general board in February that year. However, around a year after his third victory in RMC, Sagathiya defected to the AAP on April 14, 2022, along with Indranil Rajyaguru, his close friend and then GPCC vice-president and Komal Bharai, a fellow RMC corporator.