BJP eyes on Congress’s Somnath bastion, caste factors key

With weeks to go for the Gujarat Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Gir Somnath, Mansingh Parmar has exuded confidence in winning all four seats in the constituency, which the party had lost to Congress in the 2017 elections.
The caste factor has always dominated in the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat or in Saurashtra, which is one of the reasons why Congress is believed to have registered a win in all four constituencies here in the 2017 Assembly elections. With an aim to counter this factor, this time around, the BJP has given tickets to candidates on a caste basis targeting all castes.
Speaking to news agency, Parmar said, “We have faith in our party workers. We will win in Somnath. The party had not kept the community factor in mind the last time, which is why we lost here. But this time this factor has been taken care of. The party has given tickets to the right candidate.”
When asked about the dominance of the caste factor in the region, Parmar who comes from the Rajput community, said that the party will win in the district if it takes all the communities spread across the constituencies together.
“It is not that the community factor has been dominant. There are mostly OBCs in Somnath. People from every community live here. So they feel that there should be a representation from their community. There are four assembly constituencies in Gir Somnath, there is Karadiya Rajput, the other has Ahir, the third has OBC and fourth has Koli. If we take all of them together, we will win,” he said.
Talking about Aam Aadmi Party which is also in the fray and is hoping to make inroads in the state, Parmar said that “AAP’s freebies would not work” in Gujarat.
“AAP has come this time. Last time also, other parties had come. Various parties keep coming, it does not have any impact. AAP’s freebie would not work here. This is the people of Gujarat who have seen the development done in the past 30 years,” he said.
“All four seats will come in BJP’s bag. We are confident,” he added.
The BJP candidate said that the Patidar factor also had an impact in the last Assembly elections. “The Patidar factor also had an impact the last time because this factor is dominant in the Una and Talala constituencies. There are nearly 2,62,000 voters in Somnath,” he said.
Somnath is where BJP veteran LK Advani took out the Rath Yatra in the 1990s. Somnath has played an essential role in forming the BJP government in Gujarat. On the other hand, the BJP won three out of four assembly seats in Somnath in 2007.
The BJP’s graph started falling continuously in Somnath. In the 2012 elections, the BJP won only one seat out of four seats. In 2017, the BJP lost all four seats in Somnath and the Congress won all four seats.