Opinion In Gujarat polls, a jittery BJP takes on a pugnacious AAP

From contesting just 29 of the 182 Assembly seats and forfeiting its deposit on all in the 2017 elections, AAP has jumped into the Gujarat contest confidently declaring candidates for over 100 seats even before the election dates were out and has announced not only attractive guarantees, but a plan for their implementation. The strategy of its campaign has unnerved both — the Congress, whose space AAP is eyeing, and the BJP. The former has been the largest opposition and the latter, the ruling party since 2002.

Almost every political veteran and analyst in Gujarat will argue that there is no space for a third force in Gujarat, but the key contesting parties have finally begun to take note of AAP and its relentless campaign in the state, notwithstanding the investigations by central agencies against its ministers or the cases made out against the Delhi government.

Gadhvi had told The Indian Express in an interview that AAP was “not a third party in Gujarat, but the party in opposition”. That is what the BJP has begun to take seriously: That if not in 2022, AAP could become a force to reckon with by 2024, when the general elections to the Lok Sabha are scheduled and when the BJP is looking forward to a third term as Prime Minister for Modi.

In the assembly elections held in 1980 — the founding year of the BJP — the party had contested 127 seats of 182, winning only nine, when the Congress, under Solanki won 141 seats, and the Janata Party (JNP) had won 21, with 10 going to independents. But there has been no looking back for the BJP since. That election gave the BJP, in the very first year of its carving out from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), a toehold in Gujarat to become part of the government ten years later.

The Congress that owed its winning streak to the KHAM formula of consolidating Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim votes, a move that isolated the savarnas, won 149 seats in 1985, a record that the BJP seeks to break in the upcoming election. In this election, the BJP won 11 seats, shrinking the JNP’s space to just 14 seats. The 1990 general elections saw the real rise of the BJP, from third place to second, riding on Hindutva. It dealt a huge blow to the ruling Congress, which could win just 33 seats after almost 100 seats saw a three-way fight.

The JNP got zero seats and the Janata Dal, winning 70, formed the government under Chimanbhai Patel with the backing of the BJP’s 67 legislators. The BJP had contested 143 seats in the elections held in the year after the party announced its support to the VHP-led Ram Janmabhoomi Movement in Ayodhya.

In a sense, the assembly election of 2022 could become a watershed in Gujarat’s electoral history. If the BJP could rise from third place to number one in 15 years, then there might be no stopping AAP. “We should not underestimate AAP”, veterans in both the BJP and Congress say, although of the two parties, the former appears to be taking AAP more seriously and tackling it with more aggression, than Congress.

Since CR Paatil took charge of the Gujarat BJP in 2020, the party has not only been looking at regaining its lost position in the assembly elections but is also using every tool in its election kit for a record win.

Even with the Congress getting feebler with every election, (it has no Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat since 2014) the BJP’s seats have been steadily falling since 2002, when it won 127 seats, its highest so far. The fall came in spite of Modi being at the helm as chief minister in 2007, when the party won 117 seats, and in 2012, when it won 115 seats. In the 2017 elections, the first after Modi became prime minister, when the BJP had set itself a target of 150-plus seats, it got only 99 seats, and the Congress got 77, indicating there was anger towards the BJP.

There were at least 35 seats that the BJP won by 5,000 or fewer votes, which could have swung the verdict either way.

After its daredevil move a year ago, replacing the entire Vijay Rupani government with Bhupendra Patel as CM, in a bid to contain anti-incumbency and please Patidars, the BJP is going back to the drawing board: Doing a yatra spanning 144 constituencies, appointing disgruntled elements to decision-making bodies to contain factionalism, and on Saturday, announcing an 11-day campaign calling for people to write its manifesto — a leaf from the book of AAP, which asked people to vote for its CM candidate.

In attempting to maintain a fine balance between its model of development and not alienating communities on the fringes, along with prime minister Modi’s multiple visits to the state — twice camping for up to three days — to inaugurate or dedicate mega infrastructure projects, the Bhupendra Patel government has made a string of announcements. These include freeing the compensatory land given to the Ukai Dam oustees in 1972, relief to fishermen running kerosene and petrol-run boats and giving out the pending assistance to those running gaushalas. Modi has done roadshows alongside every rally he addressed, and in Rajkot, where he fought his first assembly election, he even called Rupani on stage in full view of the audience to send out a message on the former CM’s home ground. After the Morbi suspension bridge disaster, which happened when Modi was in Gujarat, the state government gave out ex gratia compensation to the next of kin of those who had died within 48 hours to quell the anger.

From August to October, Chief Minister Patel attended sneh milans of 22 OBC subgroups. OBCs constitute over half the population of Gujarat. AAP’s CM candidate Isudan Gadhvi is from one such subgroup of OBCs, who are also called Charans in some parts. Gadhvis, traditionally, were holders of keys to a castle or fort — hence their name — and are found in most parts of Gujarat, except the south.

Yet, factionalism and disgruntlement are an issue even a behemoth like the BJP has to deal with. On Sunday, one of its oldest members and two-time minister, Jaynarayan Vyas, quit, reportedly because he was not likely to get a ticket.

leena.misra@expressindia.com