BJP likely to bring 30% new faces, leave out seniors in Gujarat

With dates of Gujarat Assembly elections likely to be announced post-Diwali vacation, the ruling BJP has started its exercise to zero in on the final list of candidates for 182 Assembly seats.

Union home minister Amit Shah has been holding marathon meetings with party leaders for the past two days to discuss the probable candidates. Shah is said to have informally told reporters after one of these meetings in Vadodara that the party will field 25 per cent of new faces.

However, if BJP sources are to be believed, the party is likely to come up with "an unprecedented list" of candidates. They said that nearly 60-70 seats (about 30-40%), out of 182, are likely to be given to new faces and at least 25-30 MLAs out of 99, the party won in 2017, will not be repeated. Some of those who are not going to be repeated were ministers in the Vijay Rupani government.

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Shah has already met with party leaders in south and central Gujarat while on Monday he held meetings in Palanpur in north Gujarat to discuss candidates and other election-related strategies.

"The party is trying to find out 60-70 new faces out of 182 Assembly seats. Most of the old leaders, even if they have won three or four times in a row, may not be repeated. The whole focus is to buck nearly three decades of anti-incumbency," sources in the party said.

The removal of many senior leaders and ministers in previous chief minister Vijay Rupani's cabinet from final lists are said to be certain. "The arrest of former minister and BJP leader Vipual Chaudhary is a signal to party leaders against any sort of rebellion," said a political observer.

The ruling BJP has tested the waters in its recently held "Gaurav Yatra" where scores of union ministers and senior BJP leaders campaigned in the state aiming at public outreach. The yatra has given a mixed signal to the party's high command as the leaders barely managed to draw large crowds.

"Gaurav Yatra" was first started in the run-up to the 2002 Assembly election led by then chief minister Narendra Modi in the backdrop of the communal riots. It was also repeated in 2017.

As the election approaches, the election campaign of BJP has already hit the ground with prime minister Narendra Modi leading it from the front. He has visited his home state twice this month and is expected to arrive on October 31. The BJP's campaign has reminiscence of past elections fought around "Gujarati pride (Gujarati asmita)", communal overtones and development.

Over the last couple of weeks, the party leaders have dug up old videos of Aam Aadmi Party leaders including Arvind Kejriwal and Gujarat president Gopal Italia to discredit them as "anti-Hindu" and "Modi abusers" and "anti-Gujarat".

Posters of Kejriwal in a skull cap have already appeared in public places while Italia's videos and pictures with activists are being shared as members of "urban naxals" and "anti-Gujarati forces".

In one of his recent visits, Modi told a gathering of party workers that Congress, which used to hurl choicest abuses against him during elections, "outsourced the work" as part of its "nayee chaal (new tactic)" to someone else, hinting at AAP leaders.