Gujarat Polls : BJP Pensive But No Pushover
It will take a fool or a fanatic to
write off the BJP in the run up to the Gujarat elections scheduled for Dec 9
and 14 this year.
Almost 33 years since it last won an
election in Gujarat in 1985, the Congress is on the upswing but the BJP is
exactly not a pushover though it is on the back foot, battles anti-incumbency
and a host of other factors, mostly of it’s own making. It’s ace, son of the
soil, longest serving chief minister of the state turned prime minister, Narendra
Modi is yet to open his cards though some indications are available.
This is understandable if you consider
the fact that the BJP has been ruling Gujarat for good of two decades after
veteran leader Keshubhai Patel first brought it to power in 1995. BJP
leader Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebellion
the same year and his move to split the
BJP brought him chief ministership heading a regional party with the support of
the Congress.
However Vaghela’s decision to go in for early elections through a
16 month rule of his Rashtriya Janata Party(RJP)brought an untimely end to the
regional party experiment and veteran Patel was back in the saddle after the
1998 elections only to yield place to Narendra Modi in 2001.
Ruling with an iron hand ,Modi
remained at the helm through three vidhan sabha elections and moved on to Delhi
in 2014 as prime minister of the country.
Vaghela had joined the Congress and
recently split to repeat his regional party experiment hoping, as he puts it, to
become the Vikalp-the alternative.
Firstly let us analyse as to why does
the BJP find itself in it’s present predicament. Modi was brought in to salvage
an earthquake battered Gujarat and a credibility eroded BJP government with
just an year plus to go for polls in early 2003. He had limited time and told
his legislators on taking over that he did not have time for a five day test
and was here to play a one dayer. How he went about playing the game through the Godhra train carnage, the
statewide communal riots and the polarized 2002 elections is now part of
political history. The fact is that he swept the polls with a steamroller
margin, ruled Gujarat for 4610 days through three elections and left in 2014 to
take over as the prime minister of the country.
While he ruled Gujarat for over a
decade, Modi changed the rules of the political game irreversibly. He decimated
all opposition ruthlessly-both within the party and outside. If you were not
for him, you were deemed to be against him remained his ruling credo. He pushed
the Congress to virtual obsolescence by even hogging the opposition space, only
that the opposition was directed against the UPA government at the centre. Ditto
his own party veterans like Keshubhai
Patel, Kashiram Rana, Chimanbhai Shukla, A.K.Patel and Harin Pathak, to name a
few, who found themselves consigned to the political hermitage. Every Sangh
parivar set-up within the state was split between Modi loyalists and the not so
many.
Modi’s return to power in Gujarat,
election after election is proof of the fact that he has a finger on the pulse
of the people. In power, he was the party and he was the government.
But after
his departure from Gujarat, the disillusionment with the BJP has been rapid.
Anandiben Patel his chosen successor
and Vijay Rupani her replacement, both miserably failed to catch popular
imagination. f one was too taciturn, the other is seen as just an Amit Shah man, no more ,no less. Both chief
ministers stood dwarfed in Modi’s out-sized political shoes.
Petty politicking in a bid to settle
personal scores has proved the bane of the BJP in the post-Modi era. The bad
blood between two of Modi’s closest confidantes in Gujarat, Anandiben Patel and
Amit Shah is the worst kept secret. The irony is that the patidar agitation was
fomented from within the BJP to get rid of a patidar woman chief minister with
a cabinet and legislative Assembly that had a very high patidar representation.
Only that those who initiated it failed to ride the tiger!
In fact, the trio that is seen as one
of the major hurdles in the BJP s return to power is by itself their own creation gone awry. Hardik Patel’s
politics was on the verge of collapse at the end of the August 25, 2015 patidar
rally in Ahmedabad but the late night violence by the cops, at the behest of an
extra-constitutional authority, on hapless patel homes lit the fire that is
searing the government today. Similarly, Alpesh Thakore, the OBC leader, was
propped up by a cabinet minister until he broke free and took off for Congresss
pastures. Jignesh Mewani’s political birth owes itself to the lack lustre
response of the Patel government to the Una lynching of four dalit youth and it’s national fall-out. The three are
today squarely set to take on the ruling establishment.
Bolstered by anti-incumbency, waning
popular support to the ruling BJP as witnessed in the lukewarm response to it’s
yatras- narmada and gaurav- and the triad of ethnic vote bank leaders as force
multipliers, Congress sees more than a chance for itself in this election. However
the moot point is whether the mood is for the Congress or against the BJP?
The Congress considers, the 2015 local
self government elections in the state as the turning point. These were held
post-Modi and after the patidar unrest had gained traction. The Congress swept
the rural areas and even the semi-rural areas. However BJP’s urban vote bank
though suffering erosion, held ground. The BJP won all the municipal
corporations, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot,Surat,Jamnagar and Bhavnagar.
By a back of the envelope
calculations, the BJP had bagged 57 of the total 60 seats that can be classed
as urban in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha elections. All along it has sought to nourish
it’s urban vote support, even to the detriment of the rural areas. Urban
disillusionment is noticeable but is the discontent strong enough to ensure a
mass move?
No one knows the odds weighing against
the BJP in Gujarat better than Prime Minister Modi. And it is because of this
that he has raised the frequency of his visits to his home state. He knows that
he will have to use his personal appeal to sway voters and therefore a carpet
bombing of the state by him is on the cards.
All is fair in war and war. And for
Modi every election is nothing short of a war. He deploys every weapon in his arsenal.
The high outlay sops through foundation stones-Rs one lakh crore bullet
train,multi crore Rajkot airport, irrigation schemes and the like.
Then the inaugurations, RO-RO ferry
service, medical college and hospital and the Indo-Japan investment summits. Thus
all official largesse have been symbolically distributed before the code of
conduct came into force. Then there will be large scale Congress trashing and
even resort t o the polarization game though these are not expected to cut much
ice.
The stakes for Modi are extremely
high. He cannot be seen losing out in Gujarat 2017, if he is to retain India 2019 and so he will go all
out to retain his home state. The clincher will be a last bid emotive appeal to
the people of Gujarat to stand up for the son of the soil whom the people
catapulted to the prime minister’s position..
The Congress will need to breach
the BJP’s urban citadel and find an answer to Prime Minister Modi’s last minute
emotive appeal ,if it has to dethrone the two decade old rulers .Not an easy
task !
http://epaper.freepressjournal.in/1420268/The-Free-Press-Journal-Mumbai-Edition/06-Nov-2017#page/5/2
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