[
Seeking to awaken the Thakor community for education, the Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena (GKTS) held a massive meeting – ‘Abhyuday Mahasammelan’ – at Ram Katha Maidan of Gandhinagar in the wee hours of Tuesday.
The event was attended by thousands of Thakor community members. The gathering was also attended by leaders of the Thakor community across party lines and concluded with the groundbreaking of an educational complex – Saraswati Dham – of the group in Gandhinagar to train students of Thakor and other needy communities.
The GKTS is led by Alpesh Thakor, the BJP MLA from Gandhinagar South constituency. The Mahasammelan started at 3 am Tuesday and went on till around 6 am.
Community leaders present on the occasion included state ministers like Raman Solanki, Swarupji Thakor and Sanjay Mahida; Lok Sabha MPs Geniben Thakor, Shobhna Baraiya; sitting MLAs like Lavingji Thakor, Dhavalsinh Zala, Keshaji Chauhan, Kalpesh Parmar, Yogendrasinh Parmar and a number of former MPs/MLAs and former ministers in Gujarat.
Speaking on the occasion, Alpesh said that the GKTS had come up with the idea of deaddiction among Thakor community in 2016 and after 10 years, they have decided to rid the community of backwardness through education. He said that he wanted to see youths of Thakor community cracking civil services exams and becoming IAS and IPS officers.
He said that the fact that Thakor community people came up for the Mahasammelan from across the state in such a huge number in the wee hours showed that they are hungry for education and development.
At the end of the event, bhoomipujan for an educational centre was done near Adalaj. The educational centre will come up on 4.5 bigha land that has been allotted to the GKTS by the Gujarat government at discounted rates.
Story continues below this ad
Speaking with The Indian Express, Alpesh said that they plan to complete the work of the educational complex in two years. The centre, once completed, can train 2,000 students – boys and girls – at a time for competitive examinations and will have a modern library. The centre will also have facilities to train youths for foreign education and employment, private sector jobs, business and organic farming.
He added that youths of Thakor community will be priority, but the centre, to be built at the cost of around Rs 125 crore, will also admit poor students of all the communities.
