The Patel anger over quotas that the then 21-year-old Hardik Patel had channelled into the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti in 2015 has now turned against each other, resulting in the youth leader himself finding it difficult to address a public meeting in Gujarat without disruption.

This past week, he has been slapped in full view of the public and then had to deal with the ignominy of being ignored by his own people when he appealed for calm to break up a fight among those who once hung on his every word.

The first incident took place in Surendranagar on Friday morning, and the second in Nikol in Ahmedabad the following night, forcing him to write to the Jamnagar superintendent of police on Sunday seeking security for his road show there on the final day of campaigning.

All the 26 Lok Sabha constituencies in Gujarat vote on Tuesday.

Hardik insists it is a BJP conspiracy against him, linking the attacks to his being disqualified from contesting the Lok Sabha elections because of a conviction in a 2015 rioting case in Mehsana.

“Sadhvi Pragya Thakur can fight despite the fact that charges against her are very severe but I cannot. The BJP made sure of that,” he told reporters after the disruption of his meeting in Nikol.

This apart, his helicopter — provided by the Congress to its latest recruit and star campaigner — has been denied permission to land thrice this week in different parts of the state.

While his supporters see red, Mahendra Patel — a Patan-based lawyer who joined the BJP last month after three decades in the Congress — said it was but natural for many of those who had followed Hardik to be disillusioned and disappointed with his unilateral decision to join the Congress.

“Even Alpesh Thakor (who is regarded as a powerful backward class leader) is facing similar difficulties from those who disagree with the decision of the Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena to distance itself from the Congress,” Mahendra Patel pointed out.

Chuffed that the BJP picked him along with six others to be present at the helipad to receive Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he landed in Patan on Sunday morning for his last election rally in Gujarat, the lawyer said the Patels here have not yet revealed their hand.

He insists that the ground has shifted in favour of the BJP since the Assembly elections as far as the Patels were concerned. “This time there are no boards in Patel-dominated areas asking the BJP to stay away as was the case in 2017.”

Admitting that there was confusion in the Patidar ranks, he said: “Patels are unlikely to come out in open support for the Congress this time. They will vote silently instead of taking positions.”

However, Narendra Patel — an advocate with the Congress in adjacent Mehsana where the Patidar andolan started — insists that the majority of Patels are still with the Congress. “If it was 80:20 with the BJP earlier, that ratio reversed in 2017 and remains more or less the same,” he said while conceding some erosion.

The Patels of Mehsana on Sunday took out a show of strength and solidarity for the Congress, joining a motor rally around the constituency in large numbers. Men, women and youngsters joined the rally in their expensive cars wearing Congress colours. In fact, in both Mehsana and Patan, the Congress offices looked more charged up and active than the BJP despite the Modi rally earlier in the day.

According to Atul Patel, another Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti activist who had moved to the Congress before Hardik, there is unhappiness within the community with the change in Hardik’s lifestyle overnight.

“From someone who used to move around on a two-wheeler four years ago, he is now heli-hopping,” Atul, a native of India’s milk capital, Anand, said.

That the Patels have come a long way from their anti-quota politics of the early 1980s is evident in Anand where they are working for Bharat Solanki, son of former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki who had engineered the KHAM (Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim) winning vote bank for the Congress till the Patels joined hands with the upper castes to bring the BJP to power in the 1990s.

“Kheda district has the richest Patidars — many of them NRIs — and they are supporting Bharatbhai in a big way,” Narendra Patel, the advocate with the Congress, told The Telegraph during the road show in Mehsana after returning from the campaign trail in Anand.