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Former Gujarat Chief Minister and rebel Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Keshubhai Patel on Monday announced the formation of a new political party called the Gujarat Parivartan Party. Patel’s announcement of a new party comes just before the state goes to polls in December. Kanshiram Rana and Suresh Mehta support Patel, who resigned from the BJP on Saturday after a long-standing rivalry with Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Patel, credited of bringing the BJP to power for the first time in Gujarat in 1995, was replaced by Modi in 2001, sparking an over decade long bitterness between the two leaders. On Saturday, while announcing his resignation from the BJP, Patel had trained his guns on Modi, saying, “We will form the real BJP in Gujarat . Under Modi, there is no BJP in the state.” He had further accused Modi of taking away the BJP from the principles it had been founded upon. “This party has become a one-man party,” Patel had said on Saturday. “Now, we will fight to defeat Modi, whose government works only for a handful of industrialists while pushing the middle class and poor people — tribals and dalits — to the fringes,” Patel had said.

BJP rebel Keshubhai floats Gujarat Parivartan Party