Patan, Oct 3 (PTI) Bharatiya Janata Party leader and a prominent Other Backward Classes face Alpesh Thakor on Monday said he wanted to contest from Radhanpur in Patan district in the upcoming Assembly polls in Gujarat.

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Thakor, who rose to prominence as an OBC leader opposing reservations for the Patidar community, had won from Radhanpur in 2017 on a Congress ticket but lost in a bypoll in 2019 after he quit the party and joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

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"I have to contest from here. I have come with a dream that no anti-social element rears his head in Radhanpur. I have come here with a dream that families will have drinking water, health, education and jobs and youth don't have to migrate for jobs," he said at a gathering of women dairy farmers.

Former BJP MLA Shankar Chaudhary was by his side at the event.

Thakor has led Khastriya Thakor Sena, which works for the numerically significant OBC community. He had courted controversy in 2018 after raking up the issue of non-Gujaratis post the rape of a 14-month-old girl in Sabarkantha allegedly by a native of Bihar.

The incident had caused anti-migrant violence in several parts of the state after hate messages flooded social media.

As a Congress MLA, he had also led several agitations against sale of liquor in the state where prohibition is in force.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)