Takeaways From A Torrid Poll !
Congress
may have snatched Himachal Pradesh from the jaws of the BJP
but has been roundly routed in Gujarat.
What went wrong, remains the most asked question. If the ground reality remained
similar, how come the end results spanned two ends of the Indian political
spectrum?. But first the data and then the details.
In Gujarat ,the BJP wiped out Congress chief
minister Madhavsinh Solanki’s 1985 record of 149 seats when it bagged 156 of
the 182 seats leaving the Congress with 17 after AAP opened its account with
five seats this time . In vote share the BJP crossed past its 2017 picking of
49.1 per cent to 52.5 while the Congress fell from 41.4 to 27.3 per cent with AAP picking up 12.9 per cent of the
votes cast. AAP may have won five seats but its candidates lost their deposits
in 128 of them while forty one of the Congress met this fate. In Morbi where
135 people had lost their lives in a bridge collapse, the BJP bagged the seat
with a margin of over 62,000 votes.
Notwithstanding
the fact that the BJP lost two of the
three electoral engagements -Himachal Pradesh and Delhi Municipal
Corporation-and tasted defeat in bulk of the by-elections, its victory in
Gujarat has hogged national headlines to
the detriment of all the other electoral slights. Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s bastion remains intact and has a higher flying flag thanks mainly to his
home minister’s ground management . In hindsight there are many other factors
which seem to have contributed to its best ever tally.
The AAP
was the unquantified third angle of the triangle in this election. Its high
profile campaigning was expected to cut into BJP votes in the urban areas
and Congress votes in the rural areas.
However AAP despite its city showings failed to dent the urban strongholds of
the BJP but severely bled the Congress
in Saurashtra-Kutch as well as South Gujarat,
the two regions which were projected to
be its sheet anchors this time as well. The Congress which had
bagged 30 of the 54 seats in
Saurashtra-Kutch in 2017 was left
with just three this time .The Congress
has been reduced to third place after AAP picked up four seats here.
South Gujarat threw up a bigger surprise when the
BJP picked up 23 of the 27 scheduled tribe seats in what is considered a
stronghold of the Congress leaving it with just three. The Bhartiya Tribal
Party(BTP) has been wiped out with its patriarch Chottubhai Vasava , who filed
his candidature as an independent following a family feud involving his son,
also tasting defeat.
Congress
leaders, some still in shock, shy away from commenting on the results. Gujarat
Congress working president Lalit Kagathara admitted that AAP had bled the Congress but was at a
loss understanding the margin of
victory. ”There were overwhelming factors working against the BJP, but the
voter seems to have ignored them. Besides ,its famed booth management plan was used to intimidate voters by sending down the
message that if a certain lead did not come from it, there will be a price to
pay. However BJP leader and minister Jitu Vaghani said that the false
propaganda of the Congress over farm distress and price rise had come
unstuck .
In
fact ground reports suggest that the break-up of the BTP in the tribal belt caused by a father-son skirmish saw its work force turn to AAP. In Dediapada
its candidate Chaitar Vasava won. In many other tribal seats, it was AAP that
emerged as the runner up.
Though
a detailed analysis will bring out many more aspects of the Gujarat results
over time, but in hindsight it remains a continuing story of AAP’s entry and its impact. In the Surat municipal corporation elections
last year AAP had got 27 of the total 120 seats with the remaining being picked
up by the BJP while the Congress was wiped out. Later in the Gandhinagar
municipal corporation elections, a traditional Congress bastion where the BJP
usurped power through defections, the AAP entry changed the scenario. The BJP
bagged 41 of the 44 seats reducing the
Congress to 2 while the AAP could merely
manage one seat. In near similar style, the BJP tally soared in the 2022
assembly elections, the Congress was down from 77 seats in 2017 to mere 17 seats this time while for
all its bluff and bluster of forming the government ,AAP mauled the Congress but could manage only five
seats for itself
There
are some visible takeaways from the just concluded Gujarat elections. The Congress need to do some serious stock taking. After its
impressive performance in 2017, the party just went into a shell and was rarely
visible on the ground. AAP moved in late
but due its aggressive stance on the ground and later in campaigning made its
presence felt. In 2017 it was wiped out, this time it has marked presence in
the Vidhan Sabha with five legislators. Like it did in Punjab, AAP will now
work to become the main challenger to the BJP in 2027 unless the Congress
overhauls and revitalizes its ground level set-up to pick up the gauntlet
hurled at it.
The
BJP may have done splendidly well for itself in Gujarat, but it has been
fighting every election in the
country from the gram panchayat up to
Parliament on Modi’s name and face. The
Himachal Pradesh and the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections followed
the same route and the results indicate that overuse is fraying the image of
their mainstay round the edges.
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