With everybody’s attention rivetted on the India-Pakistan border tension, an early Assembly election in Gujarat is back on the BJP’s agenda. According to party sources, Gujarat may go through with the polls soon after the Presidential election. The present Assembly completes term next February.The BJP, keen on cashing in on the electorate’s communal polarisation, was tempted to dissolve the Assembly in April and hold immediate elections. The BJP’s national executive, which met in Panaji on April 12, ‘‘advised’’ Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi ‘‘to seek dissolution of the Assembly, go to the people, and seek their verdict’’. The national executive, while ‘‘unanimously’’ rejecting Modi’s offer to resign, said in its resolution: ‘‘In a democracy there is only one way to put the issue and the calumny to rest: the people are the ultimate arbiters, and so the people of Gujarat are the ones who can and must decide.’’However, the BJP was forced to shelve the move following pressure from Opposition parties at the Centre on the one hand and allies like the Telugu Desam Party and Trinamool Congress on the other.Party president K. Jana Krishnamurthi revived the issue today when he told mediapersons in Baroda that he could not rule out the possibility of advancing the polls in Gujarat. He said a final decision, however, had to be taken by the Modi government.The BJP’s hopes of a massive poll victory rested on a secret survey, which forecast 118 of the 182 Assembly seats for it in case an election was held in the third week of April, when communal tempers ran high. The survey predicted 62 seats for the Congress and two for others. The Congress accounted for 53 seats in the 1998 polls and the others, for 12. The Opposition party led in 69 assembly segments in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. Though the BJP had secured 117 seats in the 1998 elections and led in 113 Assembly segments in 1999, the outcome of subsequent bypolls as well as civic polls showed a downslide in its fortunes.The survey showed the BJP was poised for further consolidation of its vote in strongholds like Saurashtra (56 seats) and central Gujarat (77), while yielding ground to the Congress in the north (28) and south (21).
