Hardik claims BJP chief Amit Shah trying to harass him in Udaipur

Ahmedabad: Patel reservation leader Hardik Patel has alleged that BJP president Amit Shah was "misusing" the Rajasthan Police to harass him at the Udaipur house where he was staying after being exiled from Gujarat. Patel, who has been staying in Udaipur after the Gujarat High Court orders to keep off the state, told an Ahmedabad-based television channel that at the instance of Amit Shah, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria had directed his police to ensure that he failed to fulfil his bail condition to report to the Udaipur police station every Monday. While granting Patel bail on July 8 in two sedition cases, the high court had put the conditions that he would stay out of Gujarat for six months and wherever he stayed would have to report to the nearest police station every Monday. Hardik chose Udaipur to spend the six months outside Gujarat. Patel claimed that every Monday some obstacle or the other was being created by the Udaipur police to see that he could somehow not report to the police station, for if he failed to fulfil the bail condition, the state government would be able to move the high court to get his bail cancelled. He said the Udaipur police was not only keeping him under a virtual house arrest, they were also keeping him confined within the four walls of the house which was not the bail condition. He said that the Gujarat government is worried that despite being out of the state, he is trying to revive his agitation which had been dormant for a couple of months. Patel has already announced holding of demonstrations next month by his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti. All the PAAS leaders on Friday went to Udaipur to meet Patel and decided to re-launch the agitation from August 14 and continue with a series of programmes for the next couple of months. "The quota agitation will continue in a peaceful manner till the Anandiben Patel government conceded our demands for reservation for Patidars on the lines of the Other Backward Classes in the government jobs and admission in the educational institutions," he had said.