Alpesh Thakor

Thakor founded the Koli Thakor Sena in 2011. He has led many movements for the rights of the Thakor community in Gujarat. In 2016, he floated a movement to rid the members of his community from liquor addiction. He has also demanded stricter laws against illegal trading of alcoholic drinks in Gujarat. The Koli Thakor Sena has around 700,000 members as of October 2017.[10] Rameshji Thakor, the former state vice-president of the Gujarat Koli Thakor Sena, split from Alpesh Thakor after he betrayed the society. He formed the Royal Koli Thakor Sena in 2013 and was elected as the president of his society.[11] Alpesh Thakor, the sitting leader of the Thakor community, has been shown his worth in Limbdi by his own community. Not only was his meeting a fiasco but people also called him a hurricane. He also left the Congress and joined the BJP. But the koli Thakor community defeated him in the by-elections.[12]

Thakor comes from the koli Thakor community in Gujarat. He rose to prominence and media attention after he launched a movement to counter the Patidar reservation agitation by Hardik Patel. He founded the OSS (OBC, SC, ST) Ekta Manch to unite all people of these communities for demanding reservation according to population of the particular community. He also said that the hidden motive behind the Patidar agitations is nothing but a gameplan to scrape the reservation system, and that his movement will counter it to 'protect their constitutional right'.[13][14][15] Thakor was arrested in September 2015 along with many others for organizing a meeting of all OBC communities in Mehsana district.[16]

On 23 October 2017, Thakor joined the Indian National Congress party.[17][18] He contested and won from Radhanpur constituency in the 2017 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election.[2] He had demanded the justice of a minor rape survivor in October 2018. The rape incident had triggered the attacks on the Hindi-speaking migrants in Gujarat later. On 9 April 2019 he quit the Indian National Congress[19][20] and joined Bharatiya Janata Party on 18 July 2019.[21] He contested legislative assembly bypoll from Radhanpur in October 2019 and lost by margin of 3500 votes.[22][23] The BJP had placed Alpesh Thakor at the bottom of the list of star campaigners to keep him happy in the by-elections. A meeting was held in Sayla taluka in support of party Paltu Alpesh Thakor in support of Libdi seat candidate Kirit Singh Rana. But now that the people of the society were well aware of this opportunist, he did not go to any meeting. Alpesh Thakor's associates as well as BJP office bearers were called in to save face as the seats remained vacant.[24]