The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) surged to victory in Gujarat for a record seventh consecutive win, a sign of the continuing and relentless popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has completely transformed India’s political landscape.
In Gujarat, the BJP, which has been in power for 27 years, won 156 of the 182 assembly seats, with a whopping strike rate of 86%. The Congress was decimated winning in just 17 seats and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was hallucinating about a victory, was reduced to merely 5 seats. BJP not only broke Congress’s 37-year-old record of winning 149 seats. Rather, Congress was forced to face its worst defeat ever in Gujarat, since it became a State in 1960. The Himachal victory of the Congress cannot serve as a balm to compensate for the humiliation the Congress faced in Gujarat.
The Patidar community is back with BJP and became a decisive factor in the Narendra Modi Tsunami of 156 seats in Gujarat. Patidars have always held the key to who forms the government. Of the 182 seats in Gujarat, the Patidars comprise 15-16% of Gujarat’s electorate and hold influence in over 50 seats of the 182-member assembly.
In most of the seats in South Gujarat and Saurashtra-Kutch belt, Patidars are the dominant caste. Gujarat has 70% Leuva Patel and 30% Kadva Patel. This time, the BJP had a landslide victory and won 47 out of 54 seats in the Saurashtra-Kutch. In 2017, the BJP had won only 23 seats. While this time, Congress was able to win only a dismal 3 seats, down from 2017, when Congress won 30 seats. In Rajkot, four sitting MLAs were not given tickets this time, especially Rajkot West, from where Vijay Rupani contested and won and became CM of Gujarat. The result of this is that this time BJP has captured all the eight seats in Rajkot. The meticulous ticket distribution based totally on merit and bold decisions to drop non performing sitting MLAs in both Rajkot and Surat (Zankhana Patel dropped from Choryasi in Surat) played in BJP’s favour.
Installing a Patidar, Bhupendra Bhai Patel, as the incumbent CM, for the second time in a grand oath taking ceremony on 12 December 2022 and bringing the likes of Hardik Patel into the BJP fold, showcase Modi’s long term vision. That Patidar agitation has long since fizzled out, with Hardik now in the BJP. Hardik Patel won Viramgam by a margin of over 51,707 votes.
In fact, the Modi magic in Gujarat this time, has been all pervasive with not only Patidars, but even BJP’s tribal vote share rising to a solid 53%. Tribals have traditionally favoured the Congress but not this time. The Congress repeatedly insulted India’s first tribal President, Droupadi Murmu with reckless utterances and Gujarat’s tribal voters showed Rahul Gandhi and his debilitated Party, the exit door.
PM Modi’s outreach is the X-factor behind the Patidars swinging towards the BJP. On the final day of campaigning for Phase 1, PM Modi did an 18-km road show in Varachha, a constituency with over 60% Patidar votes, where the AAP was seemingly challenging the BJP. AAP ultimately turned out to be just a “vote-cutter”, failing to touch even the double digit mark in Gujarat, in terms of seats won. The Kejriwal model received a resounding drubbing in Gujarat, which rejected both his false bravado and his false promises based on freebies. BJP won all the 12 seats in Surat city and four in Surat district, thereby nullifying the AAP factor, as AAP’s Gujarat president Gopal Italia lost from Katargam.
As for the hill State of Himachal Pradesh, it has a history of alternating between the Congress and the BJP since 1982. The Congress won 40 seats and the BJP 25 seats in the 68-seat State assembly. BJP’s vote share was only 0.9% lower than that of the Congress and overall BJP secured just 37000 lesser number of votes. In more than a dozen seats the margin of victory for Congress was less than 1000 seats, compared to its nearest rival, the BJP. So while the Congress won the hill State, it was not a landslide.
The election results in the final analysis, shows the BJP has unparalleled dominance in national politics, as the opposition remains fragmented and the Congress continues to fight for political survival. AAP is not really a factor in the larger scheme of things, despite tall claims by Kejriwal and his acolytes.
The BJP under Modi won Lok Sabha 2014 with 17.6 crore votes. That tally rose handsomely by 31% to 23 crore votes in Lok Sabha 2019 elections and is slated to rise to beyond 30 crore votes in 2024, going by current trends. The extent of the BJP’s massive, landslide win in Gujarat can be gauged from the fact that over 27% constituencies in Gujarat reported a victory margin above 50,000 and over 6% recorded a lead of more than a lakh, showing both, the sweep and scale of BJP’s victory in the State.
PM Modi is the rarest of the rare leaders who besides being a brilliant orator, a visionary, a strategist and a global statesman, is most importantly, a compassionate leader who is always present there, where needed the most. The ability to multi-task with excruciating and long hours of relentless hard work make Narendra Modi the invincible political institution he has come to signify.
The Gujarat elections are seen to be the start of the run-up to the 2024 General Election, where PM Modi will be seeking a third term and needless to add, the Modi-juggernaut has only gotten more powerful and invincible. The BJP is in pole position to win Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka and a host of other smaller States which are going to the polls in 2023, ahead of the General Election, in 2024, given the massive momentum in PM Modi’s favour. This time, BJP won Dariapur in Ahmedabad district, which has over 46% Muslim population. Congress had Dariapur in its kitty for the last 10 years.
Hence, for those who accuse the BJP of polarising voters on communal lines, the fact that BJP won a solid 17 out of the 19 Muslim dominant seats in Gujarat, is a vindication of PM Modi’s Gujarat model that spells inclusivity and growth with equity. Suffice to say that the Gujarat victory has set the template for a more powerful Modi 3.0.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP and the Bestselling Author of ‘The Modi Gambit’.