That the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) captured power in the Gandhinagar municipal corporation or that it won 136 out of 184 local body seats, largely in the cities and peri-urban localities, is nothing unexpected. The media in Gujarat would have had their stories on Tuesday’s election results ready almost 24 hours in advance, if not more.
Ever since 1995, when the BJP first came to power on its own in Gujarat, until December 2017, the party’s electoral victories have generally been a foregone conclusion.
It is another matter that between 2014 (when Narendra Modi moved to Delhi) and 2021, the BJP has had three chief ministers in Gujarat. It is also another matter that there is no dearth of issues – at a state as well as national level – that affect almost all sections of Gujarat’s population; issues which would have seen any other party bite the dust.
The latest addition was the chaos of COVID-19. This, too, the government survived through the cosmetic change of the chief ministerial face.
Gujarat’s new chief minister Bhupendra Patel at a press conference on Tuesday said, “We got 41 out of 44 seats but our state president C.R. Paatil saheb was asking why we didn’t get the other three. That’s because he aims [for] 182 out of 182.” Neither of the two previous chief ministers used the word “saheb” to address the state party president. But then, when it comes to Gujarat, this is besides the point.
Political scientist and economist Hemant Shah summed up the situation thusly: “The injection of Hindutva is almost like an anti-Congress vaccine for the people of Gujarat. The BJP has a well-oiled network and cadres as well as an entire government machinery at its disposal that it uses with impunity – but even if it doesn’t deploy any of it, Hindutva will see it through.”
Hemant Shah, however, may not be entirely correct.
First, the numbers. Under Narendra Modi’s aggressive Hindutva, the BJP won 127 seats out of 182 in 2002. This fell to 117 in 2007, 115 in 2012 and 99 in 2017.
When the BJP high command decided to replace chief minister Vijay Rupani and his entire team last month, the reference point was the 2017 polls. It may be recalled that the BJP had then snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with an apologetic seven seats. This was despite Modi himself having campaigned in Gujarat during the last few, crucial days.
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All the issues like unemployment, farmers’ distress and the adverse effects of twin blows of demonetisation and GST, which had created hurdles for the BJP then, were very much present during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. That is, until the Pulwama terror strike and the government’s response to it. It is public knowledge that when it comes to nationalism and with it, the incumbent Hindu-Muslim divide, no one can beat Modi’s rhetoric.
However, there is a key difference. The BJP didn’t forget its close shave with defeat in 2017 and the Congress snuffed out its own flicker of victory. The decimation was accelerated when several Congress legislators defected to the BJP in regular succession.
The Congress appeared like a veritable group of suicide bombers, out to destroy themselves, with no collateral damage to the other during the local body elections in February 2021.
The Congress party lost as many as 200 seats in those elections, days ahead of actual polling. Defeat was conceded on some of these seats because the nominations were rejected, but there were more candidates who withdrew their forms on the last day. Besides these 200, there were also those who were changed allegiances at the eleventh hour, despite having got the party’s mandate.
The results demonstrated the disarray that the key opposition was in: from winning 389 out of 572 seats in 2015, the BJP scored 483 in 2021 and the Congress fell from 174 to 55. Except for Ahmedabad and Jamnagar, the Congress could not even reach double digits. None of its candidates won in Surat and the Aam Aadmi Party walked away with 27 seats.
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At the same time, the Congress’s allegation that the AAP and the AIMIM were proving to be the BJP’s B-team was not entirely misplaced. However, as political scientist Ghanshyam Shah puts it, “They [AAP and AIMIM] are walking into the space that the Congress is ceding for them.”
Tuesday’s results explain how the AAP is proving a spoiler for the Congress while the latter has not been able to do much itself. Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi buttressed his party’s argument with the vote shares. He said, “The BJP managed 46.89% vote share in GMC this time, as against Congress 28.02% and AAP’s 21.77%. In the 2016 elections, the BJP got 44.76% and Congress bagged 46.93% of the total votes cast.”
This clearly explains, he adds, that the anti-BJP vote was split by the AAP, to the BJP’s advantage. Meanwhile, Hemant Shah noted, “While the AAP got only one seat, it hopelessly split the anti-incumbency vote. If the AAP – and the Congress – want an alternative to the BJP, they have to come together. But AAP is not bothered.”
This may not be the end of the road for the Congress, receiving a glimmer of hope by bagging the Bhanvad Municipality in the Devbhoomi Dwarka district as well as several assorted rural seats across regions.
This article was originally published on Vibes of India.
