Gujarat Polls : BJP Pensive But No Pushover


 BY  R.K.MISRA

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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Waning Modi Magic !

How Narendra Modi And His BJP Helped Resurrect Rahul Gandhi And His Congress !

Karnataka Lost, New Target Tamil Nadu...And How !