Ahmedabad: As Gujarat goes to polls in the first week of December, few can stick their neck out to announce a decisive victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This time around the political landscape in the state has turned much more complicated with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into the fray, making it difficult for any political observer to say anything conclusively as to which way the wind is blowing.
What could have otherwise been a straight fight between the BJP and Congress has now become a triangular contest with AAP’s entry. Nonetheless, the ruling BJP still hopes to make a comeback despite all its shortcomings in terms of governance given the party’s overreliance on ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ Narendra Damodardas Modi.
Also read: How Kejriwal Turned 2022 Gujarat Assembly Polls Into AAP Versus BJP Narrative
The entry of Arvind Gobindram Kejriwal’s AAP, on the other hand, has proved to be an irritant for both the BJP and Congress. This election in Gujarat, therefore, is very different from others although it still has the same sound bytes, rhetoric, campaign speeches, and poll issues appearing to have captured the pulse of voters.
Congress: BJP’s traditional challenger
There is another change this time around. The Congress party has been invisible throughout the campaign, creating a perception that it is giving a walkover to the BJP or AAP.
In sharp contrast to the Congress’ aggressive campaign led by Rahul Gandhi in 2017 – with the young force of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani – the party is silently scrounging the ground. This time around Rahul Gandhi so far has been absent from the campaign. With the pressure mounting from Gujarat Congress leaders, he is expected to address one or two large rallies in the state after November 10, taking a break from his Bharat Jodo Yatra, which is currently passing through Telangana.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ in Narayanpet district, Telangana. Photo: PTI
Interestingly, it is none other than Narendra Modi who not only identified this strategy but also spoke about it at a public meeting last month, exhorting his partymen not to discount the Congress that was working quietly on the ground and had outsourced the sound bytes, the criticism, and the allegations to the AAP.
Although many may have written off the Congress in the state, it is arguably strongest in Gujarat among all other states where it is the principal opposition. From 51 seats in 2002 – its lowest tally since the saffron party came to power in the state – the Congress’s numbers grew consistently election after election, from 59 seats in 2007, 61 in 2012, and 77 in the 2017 assembly elections. Meanwhile, the BJP’s tally fell from 127 in 2002 to 117 in 2007, 115 in 2012, and 99 in 2017.
What exactly is Congress doing through its silent campaign?
The party is working on its back-to-basics theory of KHAM (Kshatriyas, OBCs, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) which helped the party win 149 seats in 1985, and 139 in 1980 – the year when Indira Gandhi cleared her Emergency cobwebs to bounce back.
Also read: Gujarat Polls to Take Place in 2 Phases on December 1 and 5; Counting on Dec 8
The party is relying on a host of leaders belonging to the aforementioned communities. After Amit Chavda, an OBC Kshatriya with limited clout, as the state president, the party handed over the responsibility to Jagdish Thakor, who is also an OBC Kshatriya leader from the critical North Gujarat region. Both the party and Thakor himself have put the past behind them of an episode when the latter was humiliatingly marginalised in favour of Alpesh Thakor, who ditched the party to embrace the BJP in 2019.
On the other hand, the party has also been throwing its weight behind young and dynamic Paresh Dhanani, a Patidar leader who snatched power from the BJP in Saurashtra’s Amreli district. Barring the 2002 assembly polls, he has been winning from there consistently.
The Congress now has an Adivasi leader, Sukhram Rathwa, from central Gujarat as the Leader of the Opposition. The party’s firebrand young tribal leader from South Gujarat Anant Patel has emerged as a force to reckon with after massive Adivasi protests led by him forced the Union and the state governments to scrap the Par-Tapi-Narmada Riverlinking Project. This is another first in the 2022 campaign – a movement led by the Congress forcing the Modi government to halt a project considered close to the prime minister.
Senior Scheduled Caste MLA from Ahmedabad’s Danilimda constituency, Shailesh Parmar, continues to be the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The party has firebrand Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani as one of the working presidents along with another committed Scheduled Caste leader and sitting MLA Naushad Solanki.
A key OBC constituency is the Koli Patel community, which has a huge voter base of 24%. While Ritwik Makwana has been made a working president, Punjabhai Vansh has been elevated as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee in the State Assembly.
As for the Muslims, who comprise 9% of the population in the state, the Congress has three sitting MLAs in the form of Imran Khedawala and Gyasuddin Shaikh from Ahmedabad city, and Mohammad Javed Peerzada, a former school teacher, who is a three-time MLA from Wankaner in Saurashtra. Peerzada lost his first election in 2002, however, after that he has been winning from here.
By trying to cultivate the above-mentioned communities and their tallest leaders, the Congress has been careful not to get caught in the cacophony of social media, where the AAP and BJP are widely known to have an upper hand over the grand old party.
AAP: The mystery candidate
The AAP has proved to be a mystery for both the BJP and Congress in the state. In fact, it can best be termed as a ‘challenger’ for the Congress, and an ‘irritant’ for the BJP. The party has been pulling out all stops to upset the calculations of both the BJP and Congress.
Also read: Former TV Anchor Isudan Gadhvi Is AAP’s Chief Minister Candidate in Gujarat
The otherwise tumultuous Gujarat politics since its formation in 1960 – no chief minister has survived the full term except Madhavsinh Solanki and Narendra Modi – hasn’t seen a third player succeeding. But, for now, AAP has generated a perception that it can possibly become a spoilsport for traditional political rivals, the BJP and Congress.
Ahead of others in the fray, the AAP on Friday announced former well-known Gujarati TV journalist Isudan Gadhvi as its chief ministerial face. It has also finalised candidates for 102 constituencies.
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal greets Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party’s chief ministerial candidate Isudan Gadhvi during a public meeting ahead of Gujarat Assembly elections, in Ahmedabad, November 4, 2022. Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann is also seen. Photo: PTI
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal first began with the rural hinterlands of Gujarat expecting to eat into the Congress base since as many as 66 urban constituencies in eight major cities and their peripheries are the BJP’s fiefdom as well as the fact that Narendra Modi’s Hindu Hriday Samrat image dwarfs even burning issues in the cities and towns.
Kejriwal has been leveraging his time-tested formula of quality education and healthcare plus free electricity, among a slew of freebie promises to several sections of class III and IV government staff, including police personnel, who have all been agitating against the BJP government largely over the contract and outsourcing system.
This generated a huge response in favour of AAP, raising an alarm in the BJP camp. For instance, within minutes of the AAP chief announcing during an agitation by families of police staff for revised grade pay that his party would ensure that Gujarat has the best-paid force in the country, the DP (display picture) on WhatsApp platform of hundreds or even more police constables had Kejriwal’s picture.
Interestingly, though the AAP has by design avoided any references to the Muslim issue or the Bilkis Bano case, many from the minority community are believed to have been drawn towards the party more because of Kejriwal’s free electricity, mohalla clinics and education rhetoric.
The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is also trying its luck in the Muslim-dominated constituencies and could emerge as a spoiler for the Congress and AAP. Instead of AAP, it is Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM that is being seen as the BJP’s B-team.
However, what has come as good news for the Congress and the BJP – in that order – is Arvind Kejriwal’s new gamble of asking the Union government to print pictures of Goddess Laxmi and Lord Ganesh on currency notes as well as his support for Uniform Civil Code, which is the BJP’s latest pitch.
It is known in Gujarat that anything related to Hindutva or nationalism is BJP’s stronghold and any attempt to get into this trap would rebound on the opponents. This has been tried and tested by the Congress’ failed temple tourism ahead of the elections.
Still, Kejriwal can expect to cut into fence-sitter Hindu voters in the urban areas of the state through this gamble. Anything that chips away at the urban voter base of the BJP is good news for the Congress which is strengthening its rural grip among the farmers, Adivasis, Dalits, cattle growers, dairy farmers and other marginalised communities.
The invincible ‘Modi-fied’ BJP
The Congress often describes the AAP as the BJP’s B-Team. Though not surely by design as it seems, the BJP also considered so when Kejriwal began his Gujarat forays in the rural areas with the promise of free electricity, which immediately caught the attention of the harried farmers and the rural populace besides his better school-better hospital promise.
Also read: With its Govt Facing Numerous Agitations, Gujarat BJP’s Show Hinges Only on Narendra Modi
Feeling the heat, the Congress had also followed with exactly the same freebie promises in rural areas but took solace in the fact that the AAP doesn’t yet have that network to mobilise the voters.
The BJP was happy in the conventional logic of most political parties, pundits and the media alike that a third player in Gujarat would by default mean a bad omen for the Congress, while the party with Modi’s blessings would remain oblivious to the world outside and that a victory is in their DNA.
The BJP, as in 2017, now completely depends on the larger-than-life Hindu Hriday Samrat and the champion of nationalism, Narendra Modi, to see it through. There is little in its government to talk home about.
The Morbi pedestrian bridge collapse, thus, has come at the most inopportune time for the BJP since it raises questions on its much-vaunted claim to corruption-free, efficient governance.
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Gujarat when the collapse took place on Sunday, visited the area and expressed sympathies by meeting the victims in the hospital, there was all-round criticism that the owner of the Oreva promoter Jaisukh Patel, which had been outsourced the maintenance of the bridge, had gone underground and that no action was taken against the BJP-ruled Morbi Municipality.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets a victim injured after an old suspension bridge over the Machchhu river collapsed on Sunday evening, at Civil Hospital in Morbi district, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. Photo: PTI.
Driven to the wall, the BJP government on Friday suspended the municipality’s chief officer Sandeepsinh Jhala with immediate effect though a police case was yet to be made against him. And then Oreva’s Patel, who is publicly known to have a close association with a section of the BJP leaders, has also not been named in the first information report (FIR) in the tragedy.
Earlier, the Bhupendra Patel government was facing as many as 32 agitations from all sections of the government staff and was forced to constitute a ministerial committee to resolve the issues. Most issues remain as it is, while some solutions to some problems have been found to be half-baked.
Besides having to scrap the Par-Tapi-Narmada Riverlinking Project following huge protests, the ruling BJP also had to withdraw strong legislation to deal with the owners of stray cattle in the wake of a huge protest by the maldhari community (cattle rearers). The maldharis are in huge numbers in many constituencies in the North Gujarat region.
The BJP has broken the Congress troika of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani, who queered the pitch in 2017, by getting Patel and Thakor into the party fold. Meanwhile, the AAP seems to have a good sway on the Patidars – more so after two key men in Hardik’s original team Alpesh Kathiriya and Dharmesh Malaviya joined the AAP last week.
Sources said the BJP is no longer putting all its eggs into the Patel basket and is concentrating on the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), who form a major chunk of voters across Gujarat. The saffron party is also looking at improving its performance among Adivasis and Dalits, besides the OBCs.
And when nothing works, as everyone in India knows, it is Narendra Modi who emerges typically like Mahendra Singh Dhoni to hit the winning six.
So, the outcome of the Gujarat election may not be anybody’s guess, not at least in December 2022.
Darshan Desai is the founder editor of Development News Network (DNN), Gujarat. He can be contacted at darshan207@gmail.com.
