Gujarat polls: Why AAP hopes to strike gold in Diamond City Surat

On the last day of campaigning in the first phase of Gujarat polls, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal chose to camp in Surat, the textile and diamond hub of the state. In a dramatic move, Kejriwal, who is also Delhi Chief Minister, predicted in writing that party candidates Isudan Gadhvi, Alpesh Kathiriya and Gopal Italiya will win by huge margins.

While Gadhvi, the party’s chief ministerial candidate, is contesting from Khambaliya, Dwarka in the Saurashtra region, Italiya and Kathiriya are candidates from two key constituencies in Surat – Katargam and Varachha.

As Gujarat goes to polls to elect a new government, Surat has been buzzing with action for the past one month. High-profile campaigning by all the three key political parties —  BJP, Congress and AAP  — and political accusations and the dramatic withdrawal of one candidate have been part of the poll campaign in Surat and south Gujarat.

Surat, which is home to state BJP president CR Patil, has 16 seats, of which 12 fall in urban areas. The BJP had lost one seat out of the 16 in the 2017 Assembly polls. The electoral importance of the region can be gauged by the fact that the BJP’s star campaigner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, began his campaign from Kaprada constituency in Valsad district in south Gujarat.

The BJP is also confident of winning the seats. “We have no doubt that we are going to win all the 12 seats and add four more in this election. We are, in fact, all set to win by a greater margin,” said Niranjan Zanzmera, president of BJP’s Surat unit.

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Noticeably, about 40 per cent of Surat’s population is from the Saurashtra region that consists primarily of migrant workers employed in the diamond and textile industries. Most of these workers, who had migrated owing to the agrarian crisis back home, have now settled in Surat with families over the years. Currently, they make up a sizeable chunk of the electoral population in the 12 urban seats of Surat. These seats are also considered important for gaining political ground in the Saurashtra region.

AAP hopes to retain winning streak

AAP, with its historical performance in the Surat civic polls last year, when it emerged as the main opposition party after wiping out the Congress, hopes to retain its winning streak. The party has been making its way into the Patidar youth community since last year, a key factor that helped it to win 27 seats in the Surat civic polls in 2021. 

In the 2022 Assembly polls, the party is banking on its three candidates Alpesh Kathiriya, Manoj Sorathia and Gopal Italiya —  all young Patidar leaders — to exercise their hold over the Patel youth in Surat.

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Kathiriya and Sorathia were aides of Hardik Patel during the 2015 Patidar agitation. After Hardik Patel quit the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an outfit floated during the movement, Kathiriya had been heading it until he too left to join AAP last year. The duo played an important role in gathering the support of Patidar youth for AAP. Gopal Italiya has been an active political activist and hails from Saurashtra.

Despite a setback that AAP faced after its candidate from Surat East constituency withdrew his candidature, they party is all set to give the BJP a tough fight in at least three of the 12 urban seats in Surat – Katargam, Varachha and Karanj – where it has fielded Italiya, Kathiriya and Sorathia, respectively.

The party is skipping just one seat — Surat East —  where it did not field any candidate after Kanchan Zariwala withdrew his candidature following a dramatic turn of events. Last month, AAP alleged that Zariwala was kidnapped by the BJP. Kejriwal took to Twitter to share that “BJP was pressurising Zariwala to withdraw after failing to get his nominations rejected”.

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However, Zariwala resurfaced and claimed that he had been with his son’s friends and that he was unhappy with AAP. And, he predictably withdrew his candidature.

BJP leaves no stone unturned

Noticeably, BJP has fielded its sitting candidate Arvind Rana and the Congress has fielded Muslim candidate Aslam Cyclewala from Surat East, hoping to bag its 22 per cent Muslim votes. However, it will be a tough ride for the Congress as the seat also has 12 independent Muslim candidates.

“The BJP wants to leave no stone unturned to retain this seat. Zariwala is a popular man in the area who has worked on the ground for years since he was in the Congress. Even if he hadn’t pulled a win, he would have managed to rope in at least 5,000-6,000 votes that would have been risky for the BJP,” said a Congress party worker from the constituency.

Also read: ‘AAP will win Gujarat assembly polls,’ Arvind Kejriwal gives in writing

The BJP, which had won 14 out of the 16 seats of the constituency in 2017, has fielded sitting MLAs in all seats except Kamrej. Amongst the sitting candidates is Harsh Sanghvi, Gujarat Home Minister, who had won from the Majura constituency by over a margin of 30,000 votes in 2017.

Textile traders unhappy about GST

Majura, a key constituency of Surat, was the epicentre of the anti-GST protest by textile traders in 2017.

The textile traders continue to be unhappy with the ruling regime. “Five years after the protest, textile traders are still struggling with the GST tax regime. Especially as the textile industry is facing an acute recession owing to GST implementation, right between demonetisation and the pandemic,” Champalal Bothra, president of  the Federation of Textile Traders Association of Surat (FOSTTA), told The Federal.

According to Bothra, the Surat textile market used to produce 5 crore metres of fabric per day until GST was slapped on it. “The small and medium traders that form about 65 per cent of the industry have been badly affected. Since 2017, we have not been able to recover our daily production, and it is now 2.5 to 3 crore metre of fabric per day,” he added.

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“We were assured by the Union government after massive protests that the GST regime will be made easier for the textile industry, but we are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. The industry is in a very bad shape and has done 50 per cent of the expected business during the last wedding season post-pandemic. 

“Due to the pandemic and unemployment, the purchasing capacity of the middle-class has gone down drastically, which has also impacted the textile industry. Buying a piece of cloth is now a luxury and the last priority of a middle-class family now,” Bothra rued. 

So, it may not exactly be a cakewalk for the BJP to retain this very important constituency in the state.