Even as firebrand Patidar leader and former Gujarat Congress working president Hardik Patel joins the BJP on Thursday, another person joining the saffron party with him cannot go unnoticed—Shweta Brahmbhatt.
A postgraduate from the University of Westminister, London, and a former investment banker, the 35-year-old quit the Congress quietly last month.
She had unsuccessfully contested the 2017 assembly elections on a Congress ticket from Maninagar seat against BJP’s Suresh Patel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earlier contested from Maninagar constituency.
Probably the most educated candidate in the 2017 assembly elections in Gujarat, she is the daughter of Narendra Brahmbhatt, a former Congress corporator.
Shweta Brahmbhatt, who is presently working on her startup, had met leaders such as Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dixit and Shashi Tharoor during a leadership course at IIM Bangalore that focussed on how 33 per cent reservation for women could be promoted in politics.
She told THE WEEK that even when she was in the Congress, she did appreciate and was inspired by Narendra Modi, the way he does work and speaks and the connect with the masses that he has. “I stay in Maninagar area and I know how it is. People would not know who the MLA is, but they would vote for Modi,” she said.
Unlike several other leaders, she does not have any qualms to talk about her ambitions. “I aspire to become a parliamentarian one day. I need to raise my level,” she said.
There was a buzz that she would join the BJP after she had a meeting in Gandhinagar with Modi during one of his recent visits to election-bound Gujarat.
About quitting the Congress, she said that she finally gave up. “There was no sync. I often asked what the purpose is of getting me in the party fold. The Gujarat Congress works more like an event management company. When an order comes from the central level, they do an event and that’s it,” Shweta Brahmbhatt observed. She emphatically added that the Congress in Gujarat does not want to win and she does not know why.
She had joined politics when she came face to face with challenges people face in getting things done.
According to her, she was asked many unnecessary questions when she approached for finance and other formalities for a startup. “This is when I realised that something really needs to be done and people like me need to be in politics to change the way systems work,” she said.
As regards the BJP, Shweta Brahmbhatt said that the party knows the pulse of people and the party workers.
