Two years later: AAP’s second attempt in Gujarat

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Kejriwal punctuated his roadshow with tea stops, chatted with farmers and held a public meeting, which he ended with chants of “Har Har Mahadev”. He said the event was the “call of Lord Shiva”, and it coincided with the granting of bail to Patidar quota stir leader Hardik Patel in a sedition case.

The BJP took to social media to attack him with the hashtag ‘NatakbaazKejriwal’. AAP, meanwhile, has accused the BJP and CM Anandiben Patel of having pressured a traders body, which had initially invited Kejriwal as chief guest to a Surat function and them called it off abruptly. The party’s attention on Gujarat has also caused some nervousness in the Congress, which was hoping to attract Patidar votes.

The groundwork

AAP had started its groundwork by sending in leaders to talk about the Delhi model of governance. Before this, it had given out full-page advertisements in Gujarat on a year of its government in Delhi.

The tours began with spokesperson Ashutosh talking of the high tariff charged by Torrent Power. AAP MLA Gulab Singh Yadav, the party’s Gujarat in-charge, has made regular visits; the party has also appointed conveners for each of the 26 Lok Sabha seats instead of district conveners.

Kejriwal, who had first backed Hardik in a video message criticising the Gujarat government for arresting him for sedition, had with him on Saturday another Patidar leader, former AAP candidate from Mehsana Vandana Patel, now out on bail in an attempted murder case.

AAP has, however, been careful to steer clear of the reservation issue. “The BJP has given 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker sections, the Congress says they will give 20 per cent reservation to Patidars, but we are not including this issue on our agenda since it has to be resolved within the constitutional framework. But the way Patidars have been treated by the state government, we sympathise with them,” said AAP’s Gujarat convener Kanu Kalsariya, a former BJP leader.

Patidar quota stir leaders, however, aren’t supporting AAP openly yet, given that the community is traditionally a BJP constituency. “AAP wants to take political mileage out of the agitation. Its support to Hardik is welcome but we are not committing anything at this juncture. Yes, we supported the Congress in the panchayat polls but that doesn’t mean the Congress has our support forever,” said Lalit Vasoya, Saurashtra convener of Hardik’s organisaton PAAS.

PAAS convener Chirag Patel said: “We will support any group or individual that supports us in our current struggle for reservation for the Patidar community.”

AAP claims a strong network in most of Gujarat except in the north, where leaders such as Vandana Patel, Chirag Patel and Dinesh Patel have quit to join the Patidar movement. However, it has attracted the likes of Sachin Patel, 28, an engineer from Mehsana who now contributes content to AAP’s social media campaign. “When I moved to Ahmedabad from Mumbai, I was happy with the Modi model of development. But I have realised that bribery and corruption are rampant here,” he said. “Being a Patidar I did support my community for quota but when a good government comes, one won’t need to ask for such things.”

Hard work ahead

AAP’s “Gujarat Jodo campaign” from February has increased membership, and all 182 assembly constituencies now have dedicated teams.

How much of this will translate into votes, however, is debatable. “An election meeting addressed by Rajmohan Gandhi in Bhavnagar during the Lok Sabha elections was flooded with our supporters, but that support didn’t convert into votes,” Kalsariya admits. “There were no workers on the ground to take people to the booths.”

Kalsariya said the 2014 outcome helped the party identify its problem — that it lacked an organisation. “Now, we have 30,000 party workers and around 5,000 of them are active workers. We toured all 26 Lok Sabha seats from May 31 to June 13, and we got a very good response,” he said.

“We are working to ensure a strong organisation at the grassroots; I am holding meetings with workers and leaders,” said Yadav, AAP’s Gujarat-in-charge.

AAP’s convener for Rajkot, Ankur Dhameliya, said this Lok Sabha seat got 15,000 new members of whom 12,000 registered online. “Most of those who have wished to work for the party are in service and in the age group 25 to 30.”

The party has been targeting students. “We can see a lot of college students of Vadodara interested in joining the party, but most of them want only an election experience. Just in a month, close to 30 students have joined,” said AAP’s Priya Upadhyay, 26, who handles Sayajigunj in Vadodara.

The party’s social media team is headed by Safin Hasan, 21, a dentistry student. “The team is mostly made of college students who give two hours daily to design posters, tweet and increase our social media outreach. Most work for free and we came up with the portal last year,” said Hasan. He claims AAP launches 3 hashtag campaigns every week, and runs 2,000 WhatsApp groups and 5 Facebook pages on major cities of Gujarat, thus “reaching out to 60 lakh people totally.”

Human rights lawyer and Dalit activist Jignesh Mewani, now with AAP, said, “Unlike the Congress, AAP has the potential to set the agenda on which it can fight the polls next year. There is a need for the emergence of a third force, what with the BJP unleashing anti- poor and anti-farmer policies. Rather than resort to a legal mechanism, AAP will work with people in getting their issues sorted out at the ground level by working with relevant authorities.”

Mewani admitted, however, that the party has to work more on its female membership, now only 30 per cent.

The other camps

Gujarat BJP president Vijay Rupani and the party’s Saurasthra spokesperson Raju Dhruv said the state has never accommodated a third force other than the BJP and the Congress. “Chiman Patel and Vallabh Patel had launched Kisan Mazdoor Lok Paksh but it never took off. Bhaikaka also tried to raise the flag of Swatantra Party in Gujarat but failed,” said Dhruv. “AAP is desperate to prove its existence in Gujarat but Patidars are sensible, educated and patriotic. They will not do anything that can compromise the interest of Gujarat and they will surely not waste their vote on AAP.”

Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi too dismissed AAP: “We don’t fear any party. The Congress won 23 zilla panchayats and 136 taluka panchayats in the November 2015 panchayat elections, covering about 107 assembly seats,” he said.