Ahmedabad, May 10: Gandhinagar mayor Pravin Patel was today given a thrashing by women Congress councillors furious at his defection that had handed the civic body to the BJP.
As Pravin, 55, was about to enter his office at the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation around noon, around eight women stormed out of an adjoining room, pounced on him and beat him up, screaming that he should resign for his "political immorality".
Pravin had won the civic elections on a Congress ticket but walked into the BJP party office uninvited last Friday and offered to defect in exchange for the mayor's job. The civic body had been tied at 16-16.
Today's incident happened minutes before Pravin was to hold his first official meeting with municipal commissioner D.N. Modi. He had to be hospitalised and is believed to have suffered internal injuries.
"Shouting at him, the women councillors started thrashing him, reminding him of his political immorality and asking him to resign," said the municipal corporation standing committee chairman Manubhai Patel.
"If I was not there to rescue him, they would have killed the mayor."
Senior Congress leader Nishit Vyas, who was present at the GMC office during the attack, said: "The defector needed this treatment. This was a lesson for him. He needs to realise the implications of his act - betraying the people's mandate and the party."
Vyas claimed the councillors got agitated after Pravin used harsh words during an argument with them. He said the women had rightly been asking him to quit on moral grounds as he had got elected on the Congress symbol and then switched to the BJP.
"The mayor had to be hospitalised as he suffered internal injuries. After he was rescued, he so got scared his blood pressure shot up," Manubhai told this newspaper.
Gandhinagar BJP chief Mahendra Das has condemned the attack. "The attack was led by women councillors of the Congress. It was their strategy to put women in the front."
Switching loyalties is not new to Pravin. He had been a BJP and VHP activist for years before joining the Congress just ahead of the 2011 municipal polls when the BJP denied him a ticket.
