Gujarat: Congress ramps up revival efforts, BJP reacts by rolling out 'bulldozer justice'

For the past fortnight, there has been an overzealous push by the Gujarat government to crack down on “anti-social” elements, those spreading ‘love jihad’, bootleggers and others accused of illegal encroachments. Unsurprisingly, a majority of those facing the crackdown are Muslims or, as per a statement made by Harsh Sanghavi, Gujarat’s minister of state for home, in the Assembly last Friday, “outsiders” who “come into my state and instigate riots”.

Bulldozers, the BJP’s preferred equivalent of justice, are an integral part of this "clean up" exercise; rolled out to raze homes in wanton disregard of the Supreme Court’s guidelines against such demolitions while chief minister Bhupendra Patel is hailed as ‘Bulldozer Dada’ by party apparatchiks.

Consistent with the BJP’s penchant to project a muscular image of its governments, the state has also introduced practices that go against all constitutional, ethical and jurisprudential tenets. Parading the accused in public, disconnecting power supply to homes and establishments owned by them, putting their financial transactions under surveillance and even cancelling bails is all par for the course.

Also read: Why Rahul met 4 forgotten Gujarat Congress veterans and what they told him

Congress' revival plans

The timing of the government’s onslaught assumes significance as it coincides with the Congress’ preparations to host its AICC Session in Ahmedabad on April 8 and 9. Already, former party president Rahul Gandhi visited the state earlier this month to make a strong pitch for the party’s revival in Gujarat.

The Ahmedabad session would be the first such conclave to be hosted by the Congress in Gujarat since its 1961 Bhavnagar session. Though the agenda of the session is to thrash out a pan-India revival plan, the choice of Ahmedabad as the venue is meant to signal that the Congress, out of power in Gujarat since 1995, is placing a premium on its resurgence in the western state.

Last June, buoyed by the Congress’s 99-seat resurgence in the General Elections, which included a solo but crucial win from Gujarat for the first time since 2014, Rahul had declared before Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha that “we will defeat you in Gujarat”.

The Ahmedabad Session is, thus, expected to see the Congress’ central leadership make a clarion call for the party’s electoral revitalisation in Gujarat. Party sources said Rahul will “personally monitor” the revival effort, which he set in motion during a visit to the state earlier this month when he addressed a party workers’ convention and met leaders across the Gujarat Congress’ ranks.

The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, sources told The Federal, has also assured his Gujarat colleagues that he would “visit the state regularly till the 2027 Gujarat polls”.

Congress 'harmony' vision

The Gujarat Congress has also been directed to ensure that its leaders present a political vision to the state’s electorate “drawing on the messages of harmony, unity and social justice” and the rich legacy of the Congress’ two greatest stalwarts from the state – Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. This is to contrast against the BJP’s long reign, which the Congress claims has been marked by “growing communal polarisation, attacks on Dalits, tribals, backward castes, women and minorities and rising unemployment”, among other things.

It is in light of these hectic activities in the Congress camp and the party’s ambitious plans, including Rahul's pitch for weeding out ‘BJP’s B-Team’ from the state unit, that the Gujarat government’s recent actions assume greater political significance.

Also read: Local body polls: BJP pays price for bulldozer politics, draws a blank in Dwarka

BJP's bulldozer justice

Over the past decade, the BJP has assiduously passed off reckless disregard of due process under its central and state governments as a zero-tolerance approach against crime and criminals.

This bulldozer injustice, meted out to alleged criminals under BJP governments, has shown no tangible decline in criminal activity. Successive annual reports of the National Crime Records Bureau have consistently ranked BJP ruled states among the top five in every category of heinous crime.

Yet, the saffron party’s legion of spin doctors has successfully camouflaged these egregious excesses as examples of ‘strong governance’.

Gujarat, the native state of Modi and his home minister, Amit Shah, is now treading the same path with Sanghavi, a Shah protégé, directly overseeing the crackdown, moniker assuming a far greater socio-political significance than its literal translation of an elder brother.

This renascent wave of the state’s ruthless bulldozer action against so-called "illegal encroachers", “anti-social elements” and perpetrators of “love jihad” is also consistent with similar actions in BJP-ruled Uttarakhand, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. Incidentally, like Gujarat, each of these states is due for polls within the next two and a half years.

Ahmedabad-based political analyst Ghanshyam Shah believed that the state government’s muscular actions mid-way into its term are in response to the uncharacteristic decision of the Congress to begin poll preparations a full 33 months before the next assembly elections are due.

“Usually, it is the BJP that begins poll preparation way ahead of time while the Congress wakes up a month before polls but this time the Congress has announced its AICC session in Ahmedabad and Rahul Gandhi has declared that the party is in preparation mode,” Shah said.

Watch: Illegal encroachments or targeted demolitions? Gujarat’s bulldozer drive sparks allegations

“In Gujarat, whenever the BJP appears to slacken in momentum, there is a fresh wave of communalism (sic); this is what is happening now with a BJP minister (Sanghavi) brazenly announcing numbers of homes razed,” Shah said, though adding that “the public is supportive of the move.”

Understandably then, Sanghavi has been proudly projecting the instances of bulldozer injustice as actions of the government for “security and safety of the state”, while garrulously declaring in the Assembly, “Dada nu bulldozer chalu rahse (Dada’s bulldozer will continue)”.

The Gujarat police, which reports to Sanghavi’s home department, has also been compiling a dossier of “anti-social elements” under orders from Vikas Sahay, the Director General of Police. The list, at last count, had 7,654 names, a bulk of them Muslims. Sanghavi has also declared that the “next round of arrests” in the state will be of those “spreading love jihad” and that the accused would be “paraded publicly, their houses will be bulldozed and electricity connection shall be permanently disconnected.”

Targetting minorities

The accusations by the Opposition and activists of the government that Muslims are being selectively targetted under the guise of maintaining law and order are not unfounded. Mujaheed Nafis, Gujarat coordinator of Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), a group that works for minority rights, told The Federal, “Earlier this year, 1,200 homes were razed to the ground in Dwarka district and all of them were Muslim fishermen who are now living on the streets. What were they accused of? Their voter identification cards mentioned their addresses and yet they were deemed illegal encroachers overnight and their homes were razed.”

Nafis said the ‘anti-encroachment’ drive in Dwarka had preceded local body polls, which the BJP subsequently swept.

Nafis also pointed out that on March 15, 17 people, all Hindus, were arrested in Ahmedabad for creating trouble during Holi festivities a day earlier and it was this incident that prompted the Gujarat Police’s decision to compile a state-wide list of anti-social elements. However, the activist wondered why these 17 accused did not face any bulldozer action which is always a prompt corollary to the arrest of Muslim on similar charges.

The first incident of bulldozer injustice in the state had happened in October 2022 in Kheda district when three police constables and a sub-inspector flogged and paraded seven Muslim men publicly after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Sangh Parivar, accused the men of disrupting a garba event.

Sanghavi had, at the time, praised the police personnel, asserting that “love jihadis deserved the treatment”. Ironically, two years later, the Gujarat high court sentenced the same police personnel to 14-day imprisonment and fined them ₹2,000 each when victims of the flogging incident sued them for police brutality and other excesses.

With the government’s fresh and more wide-ranging offensive against so-called anti-social elements drawing in harsh criticism from the Opposition and rights’ groups, Sanghavi remains defiant.

The home minister told The Federal that homes bulldozed until now were “all illegal encroachments”, while claiming that “if a mistake is committed in some cases, I would accept it before the state assembly”. Sanghavi, however, had no answer on how the state government would compensate victims of bulldozer injustice for personal and material loss if they were found innocent by a court of law of crimes they were accused of.

Flattening out rivals

Politicians and political commentators have often explained how, over the past two decades, high-handed administrative actions and police excesses against Muslims, Dalits and tribals, have helped the BJP consolidate its sizeable vote-bank of forward caste Hindus, trading communities and the electorally formidable backward caste Patidars, given the party’s success in glossing over such atrocities as necessary and legitimate action in the interest of Gujarat’s security and financial well-being.

As such, while the Congress, its already emasculated voter base now also splintered by Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, may aspire for an electoral resurgence riding on the narrative of unity, communal harmony and social justice, the BJP seems convinced that revving up its bulldozers well ahead of the polls would ultimately flatten out its rivals at the hustings.