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Updated: Jul 03, 2019 17:58 IST

Amid apprehensions of cross-voting in the July 5 elections to two Rajya Sabha seats, the Congress in Gujarat has decided to move all its 71 MLAs from the state for a “training camp”.

As the budget session of the state assembly was underway on Wednesday, the Congress asked party MLAs to reach the Gandhinagar residence of Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani in the evening.

They will possibly be taken to Mount Abu, a hill station in neighbouring Rajasthan, in a luxury bus and brought back on Friday morning, hours before the voting for the two seats. They fell vacant after Amit Shah and Smriti Irani were elected to the Lok Sabha, said the party sources.

“The MLAs, who come from far and interior regions of Saurashtra and south Gujarat, asked to arrange a training camp for voting in the Rajya Sabha elections at some nearby place. So a day-long camp has been organised in Mount Abu,” said Congress chief whip Ashwin Kotwal.

Located some 200km from Gandhinagar, Mount Abu is not only one of the nearest getaways but also a “safe location” as the region is under Congress-ruled Rajasthan.

Sources in the party, however, did not rule out the possibility of a change in the place where its leaders will be taken.

The Congress has fielded Gaurav Pandya and Chandrika Chudasma. External affairs minister S Jaishankar and north Gujarat OBC leader Jugal Thakor are in the fray from the BJP.

The Congress had flown its MLAs to a resort in Karnataka’s Bengaluru to prevent their exodus to the BJP and cross-voting ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections in 2017, when veteran party leader Ahmed Patel was seeking re-election.

More than ten Congress MLAs had either resigned or cross-voted in the election that year and Patel managed to save his seat only by one vote.

The BJP – with 104 MLAs in the 182-member assembly – looks set to win both the seats on in the July 5 election. While cross-voting by any opposition MLA will not affect the election results, Congress insiders said that party leaders feel it’s a prestige issue.

The cross-voting fear of the Congress assumes greater significance as ahead of the Lok Sabha election this year, five MLAs left the party and joined the BJP. OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, who has resigned from all party posts, and his MLA aides Dhavalsinh Zala and Bharatji Thakor are unlikely to join their party colleagues.

BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya said the training camp has “exposed” the Congress.

“It proves that leadership do not trust its MLAs and vice-versa. Instead of being with the people, the Congress is whisking away its members,” Pandya said.