Gujarat BJP faces dissent headwinds in polls thought to be a breeze

Vadodara’s two-term MP Ranjanben Bhatt who was given a ticket for the third time for the same seat opted out of the race on March 23, days after posters opposing her candidature over allegations of corruption surfaced. She has now been replaced by Hemang Joshi, the vice chairman of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation school board.

The same day, Bhikhaji Thakor who was set to fight his first big election from Sabarkantha backed out after having launched his campaign. His replacement is government schoolteacher Shobhana Baraiya, who is the wife of former Congress MLA Mahendra Baraiya who joined the BJP a year ago.

Bhatt and Thakor’s names had been finalised by the parliamentary board, the BJP’s highest decision-making body, which has Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, national president J P Nadda and other top leaders in it.

In Bhatt’s case, four people, including two Congress workers, were arrested for putting up the posters. Bhatt was the deputy mayor of Vadodara when she was “handpicked” for the 2014 by-election to the seat by then chief minister Anandi Patel after PM Modi vacated it to retain Varanasi, said party sources.

A day after Bhatt’s name was announced, BJP’s Mahila Morcha national vice-chairman Jyoti Pandya went public to oppose it. Staking claim to the seat, Pandya, in a media interaction, questioned “the party’s compulsion in repeating Bhatt”. The BJP suspended her minutes before she could announce her resignation.

In Sabarkantha, workers openly opposed Baraiya. They gathered outside the district BJP headquarters in Modasa and threw away their saffron scarves outside the gate in protest. Denied entry into the building, one of the protesters from Aravalli told The Indian Express, “What BJP is doing is wrong. We demand the cancellation of the ticket to Shobhnaben, who is not even an active and primary party member. There are women working for the party for the last 20-25 years, but the party chose someone based on her husband who joined the BJP only one and a half years ago.”

A Gujarat BJP office-bearer, denying that the induction of Congress turncoats was behind the dissent, said, “We too are surprised with what happened. Perhaps the long gap between nomination day and voting day is giving them (party and candidates) more time to rethink.”

In the five Assembly seats that will see simultaneous bypolls with the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has given tickets to four former Congress MLAs within days of their joining the party. That includes veteran Arjun Modhwadia. In the Lok Sabha polls, Surendranagar candidate Chandu Shihora also has a Congress connection, having joined the BJP in 2017.

The other protests

Porbandar too saw a campaign against ticket-holder Mansukh Mandaviya, a Union minister. Anonymous banners with pictures of Mandaviya in the company of his Congress opponent Lalit Vasoya, describing the BJP candidate as “imported”, surfaced in Dhoraji town on the night of March 25.

Things have been tougher for Mandaviya’s ministerial colleague Parshottam Rupala against whom a complaint of defamation was lodged at the Rajkot magistrate’s court on Friday by Congress leader Adityasinh Gohil, who claims “royal” lineage. The complaint was against the remarks Rupala made at an event on March 22 about “kings bowing to the British” and “breaking bread with them and giving their daughters in marriage”, videos of which went viral.

Although Rupala tendered an apology the following day, the Kshatriya community refused to relent and demanded that he withdraw from the election. The minister was forced to issue another apology in public at a community event in Rajkot on Friday. On Saturday, Kshatriya community leader Raj Shekhawat, the national president of a faction of Rajput outfit Karni Sena, resigned from the BJP in protest against the comments.

Both Mandaviya and Rupala are Rajya Sabha MPs whose terms expire next year and have been given tickets from constituencies near their home districts. Rupala, who is from Amreli, is fighting from Rajkot, while Mandaviya, who is from Bhavnagar, is fighting from Porbandar.

BJP insiders said candidate selection has been affected by dissent within local units. “The party allot tickets after taking multiple factors into account. But there were voices of protests against the selection in some places, which the BJP listened to and made appropriate changes,” said a state leader.

Other leaders, though, claimed Gujarat BJP has the capacity to take such protests in its stride. “Unlike the Congress, we have at least 10 workers in every constituency who can contest and win. It is only to respect the feelings of local workers that these candidates were changed,” said the BJP functionary.

About Bhatt and Thakor withdrawing their candidatures, a BJP office-bearer said it could have been averted had the party observers had got adequate time. The leader said, “Unlike most elections, this time the parliamentary observers arrived at short notice and all workers weren’t given adequate hearing. They failed to sense that there was strong opposition to Bhatt, otherwise the party wouldn’t have made such a blunder.”