Gujarat: Powder keg politics ensures ground turbulence

Gujarat's urban areas are considered BJP fortresses, and Congress is stronger in rural areas, so AAP's inroads in urban agglomerations are likely to be at BJP's cost

Hitherto the exclusive domain of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)'s entry into the Gujarat election arena gives notice of a season of heightened aggression as the new challenger and the old one brace to beard the lion in its own den.

Gujarat has largely been a straight contest between traditional rivals, the BJP and the Congress. However, regional parties, including the AAP, have unsuccessfully tested the electoral waters since the inception of the state in 1960.

Aggressive ground domination has been the hallmark of the BJP's conduct and campaigning, more so after Narendra Modi took charge in 2001. This strategy received its first setback a year after Modi's departure for Delhi in 2014 when restive youth wrested the initiative through the Hardik Patel-headed Patidar agitation, Alpesh Thakore shepherded the OBC movement and the Jignesh Mevani-led Dalit stir.

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All three helped the Congress within winning distance in the 2017 polls before the effort faltered short of breasting the tape and the BJP heaved a sigh of relief with an eight-seat victory in a House of 182 seats. Thereafter, Alpesh switched to the BJP just before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and Hardik, made the Gujarat Congress working president, has blotted his copybook with his trademark dithering, pitchforking Mevani to key player status in the Congress election plans, aided in no small measure by his arrest and incarceration in Assam.

The Kejriwal-led outfit's debut in the 2017 Assembly elections was a disaster losing all the 30 seats it contested and security deposits in the bulk of them. The highest its candidate polled was 4,500 votes in Chotta Udaipur with the saving grace that it helped a Congress veteran, Mohansinh Rathwa, win the seat by a 1,000 votes. Its internal assessment made the AAP concentrate on ten seats with chances of winning but in vain. The AAP's Gujarat poll strategist, Sandeep Pathak, has given his party 58 seats this time if elections are held right away and claims that the Intelligence Bureau's estimate stands in close vicinity.

Buoyed by the Punjab election results where it swept to power, displacing the Congress, the AAP has upped the ante in Gujarat this time, matching favourites BJP, a lob for a volley, and a drop shot to a smash hit in terms of aggression.

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BJP volunteers may enjoy the backing of the formidable government machinery, but AAP workers, who are a youth force, make up with gusto and spirit for what they lack in terms of resources. There have been frequent clashes every time the AAP organised demonstrations at the BJP state headquarters in Gandhinagar last December over leaked examination papers of government recruitment examinations or brutalisation of their protesting councillors, including women in Surat this month. With the cops intervening on the side of the rulers, AAP volunteers are being arrested on a variety of charges, but their activism is getting them popular approval for taking up people's pinching issues.

That the shoe is beginning to pinch was evident when the Gujarat BJP president, C R Patil, speaking at a party function in Surat on May 7, termed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal "not only a thug but a big thug who was now offering freebies to get people to vote his party". Though he did not name him, the inference became apparent in the subsequent references when he termed him a khalistanwadi. Interestingly it was in Patil's Surat that the AAP made its first significant impact in Gujarat, bagging 27 seats in the Surat Municipal Corporation elections in February last year. However, it could manage only one seat even as it cornered 21 per cent of the votes in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation elections eight months later.

Though the AAP has been fiercely locking horns with the ruling BJP in Gujarat, its urban local self-government body election achievements have been at the cost of the Congress. In Surat, the BJP bagged 93 seats, the AAP 27, and the Congress drew a blank in the 120 member body. In the state capital's civic body, where the Congress in the past either had the upper hand or drew level, the BJP induced defections to come to power. This time the tide turned. The BJP bagged 41 of the 44 seats, the Congress 2 and the AAP one. However, the combined vote percentage of the Congress (27.97 per cent) and the AAP (21.3 per cent) is higher than the BJP's 46.49 per cent.

The twist in the tail is that urban areas of Gujarat are considered impregnable fortresses of the BJP, with the Congress stronger in the rural areas. Therefore, all the AAP inroads in urban agglomerations are likely to be at the cost of the BJP. Municipal Corporations in the key cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, and Junagadh are all BJP controlled.

The tribal areas of Gujarat, which flank Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, have been the traditional preserve of the Congress, but it has faced erosion progressively over the last two elections. The state has a 14.8 per cent tribal population and accounts for 27 Scheduled Tribe (ST) reserved seats. All three parties are eying these seats. The BJP would like to make up any likely urban shortfall from here and, in keeping with its policy of picking readymade goods off the shelf, has poached three-term Congress MLA from Khedbrahma in tribal Sabarkantha district, Ashwin Kotwal, within the last week.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a flurry of development projects in Dahod at an Adijati Mahasammelan recently, while Kejriwal announced a tie-up with the Bharat Tribal Party (BTP) of Chottu Vasava on May 1. Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi is slated to attend a major tribal event in Dahod on May 10, while the BJP, not to be outdone, has decided on a three-day convention of all tribal MPs of the party at the Statue of Unity (SAU) around the same time.

Nevertheless, Congress leaders who tend to term the AAP as the 'B' team of the RSS argue that it is most active in states where their party, the Congress, is either in power or a strong contender as the leading opposition. They cite Punjab and Goa, where the AAP strained every nerve and Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, which have been marked out for special attention while questioning its virtual absence in Uttar Pradesh in the just concluded polls. "If Kejriwal thinks that he has developed the muscle to take on Modi by wresting one state, he is living in a fool's paradise. In fact, he is weakening the forces that are working to take on Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, thus confirming our suspicion that AAP is the 'B' team of the RSS tasked with apportioning opposition space to itself at the cost of the Congress," a veteran Congress leader points out.

Indirect affirmation comes from a former BJP veteran of similar standing who is very clear that 2024 is the last chance for the combined opposition, which includes opposition ruled states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and those that go to polls later this year and next year to put their selfish interests behind and come together. If Modi returns to power again, the face of the Constitution and its federal structure will be unrecognisable, and the dissenting states will be picked up like cherry droppings, he predicts.

(R K Misra is a senior journalist based in Ahmedabad)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.