Opposition slams EC for deferring Gujarat poll date announcement
In a repeat of 2017, when it had controversially declared the election schedule for Himachal Pradesh but not for Gujarat despite the terms of the two-state Assemblies expiring within months of each other, the Election Commission (EC), on Friday (October 14), announced that Assembly polls in Himachal will take place on November 12 but held back the poll schedule for Gujarat.
Predictably, the EC’s decision to hold back the poll announcement for Gujarat has been slammed by both, the Congress party and the AAP, who would be the ruling BJP’s key challengers in the western state. Jairam Ramesh, Congress’ communication department chief, has alleged that the EC’s decision was aimed at giving Prime Minister Narendra Modi more time “to make some mega promises and carry out more inaugurations” in a bid to sway voter sentiment towards the BJP.
What CEC said
Back in 2017, the EC had decided against clubbing the announcement of poll dates for the two states on grounds that Gujarat had, at the time, been ravaged by floods which had made it derailed the poll panel’s pre-election preparations. This time around, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar justified not clubbing the announcement by citing poll panel’s 2017 decision as a precedent and adding that there was a difference of a little over a month between the expiration of the tenure of the current assemblies in the two states, with the present Gujarat Assembly’s term ending on February 18, 2023 while that of Himachal getting over on January 8, 2023.
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It is a different matter that just in January this year when the EC had simultaneously announced the elections schedule for Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur, it had done so despite the tenure of the then Uttar Pradesh Assembly ending after two months of the expiration of the terms of the Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur Assemblies.
Sources in the EC said an announcement of the Gujarat Assembly elections is likely at the end of the month and that the date (or dates, in case the EC, like in 2017, decides against a single-phase election) of polling would fall between November 12 and December 8.
“Polling in Himachal is scheduled for November 12 and the results will be announced on December 8, so there is a gap of almost a month between polling and counting of votes. Last time also, the polls for Gujarat were announced after Himachal but counting of votes for both states was done the same day. This time also, the date of counting will be the same for both states,” an EC official told The Federal.
The Congress and AAP believe Modi, who was in Gujarat earlier this week to unveil a slew of irrigation, power, education and urban infrastructure projects, is set to return to the state for another spree of inaugurations and populist announcements before the EC announces the poll schedule for the state. “The delay in announcing the poll schedule is deliberate and has been done to allow Modi and (Gujarat CM) Bhupendra Patel to make announcements that they would otherwise not be allowed to make if the model code of conduct was imposed. It is clear that the rising popularity of Kejriwal and AAP in Gujarat has made the BJP nervous and the EC has obviously delayed an announcement of the Gujarat election under instructions from Modi,” senior Gujarat AAP leader Isudan Gadhvi said.
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With 182 Assembly constituencies, Gujarat may not seem like a state whose political rumblings would have any significant ramifications nationally. Yet, the forthcoming mandate for Gujarat could, unwittingly, set the electoral narrative rolling for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
BJP’s stronghold
In the traditionally bipolar state, the BJP has been in power since 1995. The Congress has remained Gujarat’s principal Opposition party for the last 27 years; its vote share fluctuating between a sizeable 35 and 41% in successive Assembly polls despite defeats. In 2017, the Congress had won 77 seats to come within striking distance of dethroning the BJP and for the first time since 1995, brought the BJP’s victory tally to below 100 seats. No other political outfit – splinter groups formed by disgruntled Congress or BJP satraps or others like the BSP, SP, JDU, NCP or even the AAP – has succeeded in making any significant electoral in-roads in Gujarat, so far.
However, as the home state of Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah readies to give a fresh mandate, Gujarat, for the first time, appears set for a triangular contest. The mandate will not only have wider implications for the BJP, which rules the state and the Centre, but also for the floundering Congress that is desperately praying for an electoral resuscitation. For Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, which has pegged high hopes on Gujarat’s electorate despite polling a total of 24,918 votes (0.1 percent vote share) across the state in 2017, the stakes are, arguably, even higher.
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The poll result would determine the future course of AAP’s expansion plan and the Delhi CM’s bid to pivot himself as a key contender for the prime minister’s post in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections against Modi and sundry other aspirants from different Opposition parties, including Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, Trinamool’s Mamata Banerjee and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (recently re-christened Bharat Rashtra Samithi) chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao.
As things stand today, several political observers have commented that the contest in Gujarat appears to have already become a fight between the BJP and the AAP. The inexplicable exclusion of Gujarat from the route of the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, of which Rahul Gandhi is the undisputed mascot, the lack of a cohesive poll campaign and an uninspiring state leadership, coupled with an unending crisis of attrition of its leaders to the BJP or the AAP have collectively given an impression that after Delhi and Punjab, the Congress may now yield its electoral ground to the AAP in Gujarat too.
Countering anti-incumbency
The BJP had taken pre-emptive steps to counter any anti-incumbency by replacing the hugely unpopular Vijay Rupani with the uncontroversial Bhupendra Patel as chief minister as well as picking an entirely new state cabinet last September. Though Bhupendra Patel and other state BJP leaders lack a pan-Gujarat electoral appeal, the saffron party is hoping that it would wrest power in the state yet again riding on the continuing popularity of Modi, the clever election planning of Shah and on exaggerated but widely believed claims that it was the BJP, which during the 27 years of its rule, made Gujarat a prosperous state.
The Prime Minister has been micro-managing the BJP’s Gujarat campaign. The Federal had reported on September 15 that a key member of the Prime Minister’s Office was directly supervising governmental projects in Gujarat while Amit Shah had been tasked with ensuring that the party’s formidable electoral machinery in Gujarat doesn’t grow complacent. BJP sources say that as in the previous elections, the forthcoming polls will also see the party denying tickets to a sizeable chunk of incumbent MLAs in a bid to counter anti-incumbency against such legislators and the party.
Also read: Modi warns BJP workers in Gujarat over Congress’ ‘manipulative’ tricks
On the other hand, Kejriwal, armed with a laundry list of populist poll promises, aggressive showcasing of Delhi’s celebrated education infrastructure and an unabashed display of their Hindu credentials, is convinced that the AAP could replace the Congress as the state’s main Opposition party even if it fails to ultimately defeat the BJP. At a recent rally in the state, Kejriwal had told Gujaratis that he was born on Krishna Janmashtmi and that Lord Krishna, the most revered Hindu God in Gujarat, had sent him on earth to slay the many Kansa (Krishna’s maternal uncle and nemesis) who had looted Gujarat and the country while being in power under AAP’s rival political parties.
Kejriwal has deputed Rajya Sabha MP Sandeep Pathak, the former IIT-Delhi professor who worked behind the scenes on the AAP’s Punjab campaign, to Gujarat to chalk out a winning strategy. The Federal had reported earlier that Pathak has identified some 125 assembly constituencies in Gujarat – including the 77 that were won by the Congress in 2017 – where the AAP can register a strong electoral performance. Pathak has also been surveying issues that voters in these 125 seats want addressed by their MLAs. Periodic surveys to gauge public sentiment, massive door-to-door publicity of welfare schemes rolled out by AAP in Delhi and Punjab, outreach to economically backward sections who can be lured by promises of free electricity, health care and education along with setting up of booth-wise teams of party workers to ensure frequent interactions between the public and AAP leaders are also part of Pathak’s strategy, besides discrediting the Congress as a viable alternative to the BJP.
Meanwhile, sources in the Congress claim that the party’s campaign for Gujarat will kick off in full steam only after the party’s presidential election concludes on October 19. There is also considerable unease within the Gujarat Congress over the state’s exclusion from the Bharat Jodo Yatra route and a feeling that Rahul, who had taken a personal interest in the party’s 2017 campaign led a spirited campaign against the BJP with the help of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor (both are now in the BJP) and Jignesh Mewani, has left his party colleagues in the state to fend for themselves in the forthcoming election.
New Cong prez to plan poll campaign
Before starting the Bharat Jodo Yatra on September 7, Rahul had addressed a massive convention of party workers in Ahmedabad on September 5 and unveiled the Congress’ “eight guarantees” to the people of Gujarat that would be fulfilled if the party comes to power in the state. Congress sources say unlike 2017, Rahul will not campaign extensively in Gujarat this time round as he is insistent on walking the entire stretch of the Bharat Jodo Yatra that is currently passing through Karnataka and has another four months to go before it concludes in Kashmir’s Srinagar. As such, Rahul is likely to campaign in Gujarat only when the yatra breaks for “rest days” during which its participants camp in one place for a day or two to unwind, take feedback of the preceding days of the walkathon and plan for the journey ahead.
As such, planning the Gujarat poll campaign will be left to the new Congress president, the party’s state leadership and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, who is the party’s central observer for Gujarat and had also been in-charge of the 2017 poll campaign. Gujarat Congress working president and sitting legislator from Vadgam, Jignesh Mewani told The Federal that though the Congress’s campaign may not be visible at the moment, the party has been “working quietly at the grassroots level and particularly in rural and semi-rural areas where the media does not focus”. Ironically, Mewani’s claim had been echoed by Modi during the latter’s recent visit to the state.
“The Dalits, adivasis, backward communities like the Kolis and Thakors and the religious minorities of Gujarat have always stood by the Congress. From November 1, we will start campaigns focussed at each of these groups; sammelans, rallies and marches are being planned in regions where these communities are concentrated… we will also highlight the BJP’s oppression of these communities, particularly the tribals and Dalits… our leaders like Anant Patel have also started mini versions of the Bharat Jodo Yatra and though the national and mainstream media is not showing the images, these yatras have been drawing huge crowds and feedback from the grassroots has been very positive” Mewani told The Federal.
