Minutes after the Election Commission of India started releasing the Gujarat trends on Thursday morning, large banners came up outside the Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi headquarters, announcing that the party, formed in 2012 on the back of a powerful anti-corruption movement, has turned “national”. But attaining the national status was the least that the AAP was hoping to achieve after having led an aggressive campaign in Gujarat, where the nature of electoral contests has been bipolar in nature ever since the formation of the state in 1960.
POLITICAL PULSE | For AAP, well begun is half done in Gujarat
If Gujarat exemplifies the current invincibility of the BJP with almost double the vote share of its nearest rival in the state, Himachal Pradesh too brings into sharp focus the difficulties in displacing the BJP — Congress and BJP are practically tied there in terms of vote share. Both assembly outcomes alert us to the fact that the second dominant party system that emerged in 2014 is not showing any signs of decline. In a system dominated by one party, expectations of the Opposition often hinge on the ultimate possibility of voter fatigue if not voter response to genuine economic woes. Such expectations tend to ignore the capacity of the dominant party to keep the voters hooked to its rhetoric and leadership.
In the latest round of assembly elections, the two results go in two different directions. Therefore, critics of the BJP are likely to exaggerate the example of Himachal Pradesh and refuse to learn from the Gujarat results. While it would be misleading to read too much in the outcome in Himachal, the greater mistake will be to not understand the Gujarat outcome for its real message.
EXPRESS OPINION | Suhas Palshikar writes: BJP’s victory in Gujarat has an afterlife that we must pay attention to
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intense campaign and a meticulously planned organisation strategy, the party, which was limited to 99 five years ago, is on course to win more than 150 seats — more than its highest tally of 127 so far — and eclipse the Congress’s record of 149 seats in the 1985 Assembly polls that came on the back of a sympathy wave created by Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
Unlike in 2017, when the Congress launched a massive campaign and legwork to capitalise on a strong Patidar agitation and widespread anger among the farmer community against the then BJP government, the party did not have any major mass movement to deal with. But the anti-incumbency was strong and there has been complacency and fatigue among the cadre.
With the BJP holding on to Gujarat with its highest margin ever, the spotlight is on the role its state chief Chandrakant Raghunath Paatil, popularly known as CR Paatil, will assume going forward.
Paatil, who was appointed state chief in July 2020, first set a target of winning “all 182 seats” in the state. The party went on to reconfigure this around the 1985’s Congress’s record of 149 seats, and eventually surpassed the count by winning 156, including the seven in the Navrasi Lok Sabha constituency that Paatil represents.
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BJP functionaries that spoke to The Indian Express said they believed that the party high command will certainly be giving Paatil “a bigger role, most probably at the national level”. (Read more)
Bhupendra Patel will continue as Gujarat Chief Minister for a second term after he was elected legislative party leader in a meeting of BJP MLAs on Saturday. (PTI)
The Gujarat elections, which were swept by the BJP in a historic result, also saw the party’s candidates directly or indirectly connected with the 2002 riots win their seats. Those not fighting on BJP tickets, though, were not as lucky.
Godhra MLA C K Raulji, who had won the seat with a narrow margin after defecting from the Congress, won this time expanding his lead substantially, and personally besting his winning margin.
The BJP had deployed its star campaigners, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Ministers Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma, to campaign in the constituencies of Naroda and Godhra, while Union Home Minister Amit Shah made several references to the 2002 riots in his speeches, including saying that “the rioters had been taught a lesson”. (Read more)
Dropping from 59 per cent, the success rate of women candidates in the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections, which recorded 40 female candidates from all four political parties, reduced to 37.5 per cent as only 15 women candidates made it to the House.
Among these 15 newly elected women MLAs, 14 won from the largest political party (BJP), which had fielded 17 women candidates, followed by one out of 14 contesting from the Congress. Not a single woman candidate from AAP, which had fielded seven candidates, and none of the two AIMIM candidates could make it to the House. (Read more)
The BJP’s landslide victory in Gujarat poses another existential crisis for the Congress. With the party reduced to 17 seats in a House of 182, with the BJP winning 156, the Congress now faces the risk of losing the post of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly.
On Thursday, replying to a question on what if the Congress did not get 10 per cent of the total seats in the Assembly, Gujarat BJP chief C R Paatil said, “Then its right to be the opposition party will be taken away.”
A senior officer of the Gujarat Assembly, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “There is no codified rule in the Gujarat Assembly on granting the status of LoP. However, a norm is being followed by the Speaker since 1960, according to which any party that gets a minimum of 10 per cent of the total seats, gets recognised as an opposition party.” The Congress is one short of the 10% mark, at 18 seats. (Read more)
The BJP’s record-breaking victory in Gujarat illustrates the success of its booth micromanagement, complimenting the popularity and trust PM Narendra Modi enjoys among the electorate. Over in Himachal Pradesh, the absence of a similar strategy and organisational failure to effect timely changes could have cost it the state.
In Gujarat, Modi campaigned extensively, building on the organisational strategy devised by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the ground prepared by state unit president C R Paatil. A senior party leader said: “Micromanagement is the BJP’s style, but in Gujarat, the entry of the Aam Aam Party, splitting the anti-BJP votes, helped. Rahul Gandhi’s disengagement with the anti-BJP movement in the state and the local Congress leadership’s disinterest just added to it.” (Read more)
If Gujarat exemplifies the current invincibility of the BJP with almost double the vote share of its nearest rival in the state, Himachal Pradesh too brings into sharp focus the difficulties in displacing the BJP — Congress and BJP are practically tied there in terms of vote share. Both assembly outcomes alert us to the fact that the second dominant party system that emerged in 2014 is not showing any signs of decline. In a system dominated by one party, expectations of the Opposition often hinge on the ultimate possibility of voter fatigue if not voter response to genuine economic woes. Such expectations tend to ignore the capacity of the dominant party to keep the voters hooked to its rhetoric and leadership.
In the latest round of assembly elections, the two results go in two different directions. Therefore, critics of the BJP are likely to exaggerate the example of Himachal Pradesh and refuse to learn from the Gujarat results. While it would be misleading to read too much in the outcome in Himachal, the greater mistake will be to not understand the Gujarat outcome for its real message. (Read more)
The lone Muslim face in the newly-elected 182-member 15th Gujarat Assembly is the sitting Congress MLA from Ahmedabad’s Jamalpur-Khadia, Imran Khedawala, who has been re-elected from the constituency with a margin of 13,658 votes.
The Muslim community makes up 9.67 per cent of Gujarat’s population. There were three Muslim MLAs, all from the Congress, in the 14th Gujarat Assembly.
The lack of representation of Muslims in the legislatures is not limited to Gujarat or just the BJP-ruled states. (Read more)
Bucking the trend of incumbent agriculture ministers losing elections in successive BJP governments, Raghavji Patel, the agriculture minister in the outgoing Bhupendra Patel government, managed to retain his seat of Jamnagar Rural in Jamnagar district on Thursday.
Raghavji defeated Prakash Donga, his main challenger from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), by 47,500 votes. Raghavji polled 79,439 votes, while Donga got 31,939, Kasam Khafi (BSP) 29,162, and Jivan Kumbharvadiya (Congress) 18,737.
In the past, agriculture ministers, who would mostly be from Saurashtra, lost elections during the 27-year BJP reign. Parsottam Rupala, agriculture minister in the first Narendra Modi government, had lost the 2002 Assembly election to Paresh Dhanani of Congress from Amreli seat. In 2007, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, the then agriculture minister in the second Modi government, had lost to Kanji Talapada from Dholka Assembly seat in Ahmedabad district. In the 2012 Assembly election, then agriculture minister Dilip Sanghani had lost to Paresh Dhanani of Congress. Chiman Sapariya, the then incumbent agriculture minister had failed to retain his Jamjodhpur seat in Jamnagar district in 2017, while Chirag Kalairya of Congress emerged victorious. This election, Sapariya was defeated by Hemant Khava of AAP, while Kalariya, the sitting MLA, was relegated to third position.
Gopal B Kateshiya reports
With the Congress ending up with its worst performance in Gujarat, dropping to 17 seats from 77 last time, its newly elected Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani said he regretted that the party “did not use me enough” during the elections.
Having scraped through in Vadgam against the BJP’s Manibhai Vaghela, Mevani, who is also the working president of the Gujarat Congress, told The Indian Express Friday: “I strongly feel I could have been used in a much better way; not after I filed my nomination, but much earlier. I fail to understand that when they (the Congress) have a face like me, who can catch people’s imagination, who has credibility, who is solidly anti-BJP and has a good following, why could he not address public meetings across the state?… Jan sabha karvana chahiye tha (Public meetings should have been held), to energise the people, the Dalits.”
A Dalit leader who rose to prominence in the wake of the Una incident, and won his first election as an Independent backed by the Congress in 2017, Mevani ran an energetic campaign. Another young, charismatic leader of the Congress, Kanhaiya Kumar, turned up to campaign for him along with Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi.
Leena Misra writes
The BJP’s landslide victory in Gujarat poses another existential crisis for the Congress. With the party reduced to 17 seats in a House of 182, with the BJP winning 156, the Congress now faces the risk of losing the post of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly.
On Thursday, replying to a question on what if the Congress did not get 10 per cent of the total seats in the Assembly, Gujarat BJP chief C R Paatil said, “Then its right to be the opposition party will be taken away.”
A senior officer of the Gujarat Assembly, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “There is no codified rule in the Gujarat Assembly on granting the status of LoP. However, a norm is being followed by the Speaker since 1960, according to which any party that gets a minimum of 10 per cent of the total seats, gets recognised as an opposition party.” The Congress is one short of the 10% mark, at 18 seats.
Parimal A Dabhi writes
The lone Muslim face in the newly-elected 182-member 15th Gujarat Assembly is the sitting Congress MLA from Ahmedabad’s Jamalpur-Khadia, Imran Khedawala, who has been re-elected from the constituency with a margin of 13,658 votes.
The Muslim community makes up 9.67 per cent of Gujarat’s population. There were three Muslim MLAs, all from the Congress, in the 14th Gujarat Assembly.
The lack of representation of Muslims in the legislatures is not limited to Gujarat or just the BJP-ruled states.
Currently, there are 26 Muslims among the total 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha — making their representation 4.78 per cent, against 14.7 per cent share in the country’s population.
Zeeshan Shaikh writes
A day after the Congress was decimated in Gujarat, the party’s central leadership on Friday blamed the state unit for the defeat, saying the result was a “very sad reflection” on the state’s organisation. Promising introspection, the party said it was time to bring in a new leadership and take tough decisions.
The party forcefully argued that the absence of Rahul Gandhi from the campaign in Gujarat – he had addressed only two token rallies in Surat and Rajkot – had not impacted the outcome. The party said there were shortcomings in the Congress campaign and in the local leadership.
In the same breath, the party argued that the Congress had scored a “major victory” in 2017 when it managed to restrict the BJP to below 100. In 2017, Rahul had led a spirited campaign with the same set of local leaders powering the Congress to 77 and bringing down the BJP to 99. Read more
Pathan Emtiazkhan Sidkhan, JD(U)'s candidate from Bapunagar seat in Ahmedabad, had the misfortune of polling just 30 votes, the lowest by any contestant in the just-concluded Gujarat assembly elections.
The 45-year-old, however, sought to put the blame on his party for not campaigning for him.
"I would have got more votes had I contested as an independent candidate," he said.
Pathan is not new to politics. He had earlier tried his luck in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Kheda constituency in Gujarat and, according to him, he had got over 5,000 votes.
"I was an independent candidate then. But who knows JD(U) here? No one. This was bound to happen," he said, adding that the party gave tickets to about half a dozen candidates and all lost. The votes Pathan got were the lowest among the 1,621 candidates who contested for a total of 182 seats in the state. The BJP registered a historic victory by clinching 156 seats.
A key witness of the Gulberg society massacre during the 2002 Gujarat riots, Pathan said that after the 2019 elections, he joined Asaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and remained a member for two years.
"But when I realised the party would not give me a ticket for the 2022 assembly elections, I had to switch sides to JD(U)," he said.
Consoling himself while referring to some candidates from other constituencies, who got less than 100 votes, Pathan, an electrician by profession, said, "I didn't expect such a pathetic response but I want to accept it as people's verdict." (PTI)
Of the 45 new candidates fielded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Gujarat Assembly elections by dropping the sitting MLAs, all but two sailed through.
In a bid to nullify anti-incumbency sentiment, the ruling party dropped 45 MLAs including former chief minister Vijay Rupani.
The saffron party is in power in Gujarat for 27 years.
The strategy paid off as most of its new candidates won the election.
The exceptions were Botad and Waghodia where new BJP candidates were defeated by their Aam Aadmi Party and independent rivals, respectively.
In Botad, the BJP had dropped sitting MLA and former energy minister Saurabh Patel and fielded Ghanshyam Virani. Patel had won the seat in 1998, 2002, 2007 and 2017. In 2012, the BJP's T D Maniya had won the seat.
In a major upset this time, Virani was defeated by AAP's Umesh Makwana with a thin margin of 2,779 votes.
In Waghodia constituency in Vadodara district, the ruling party replaced sitting MLA Madhu Shrivastava with Ashvin Patel. Shrivastava, a six-time MLA, then jumped into the fray as an independent.
Dharmendrasinh Vaghela, another aspirant for the BJP ticket, also contested as an independent and defeated Patel by nearly 14,000 votes. Shrivastava ended fourth with 14,645 votes while Congress candidate received 18,870 votes.
But everywhere else the BJP newcomers managed to sail through.
Prominent MLAs who were dropped by the party in 2022 included former chief minister Rupani, former deputy CM Nitin Patel, former home minister Pradipsinh Jadeja, former revenue minister Kaushikbhai Patel, speaker of the outgoing Assembly Nimaben Acharya and former Gujarat BJP president R C Faldu.
Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil had defended the decision before the polls, saying that change is necessary in electoral democracy for avoiding stagnation. (PTI)
A day after its drubbing in the Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress on Friday blamed the state leadership for the poor showing and said it is time to introspect as well as take "tough decisions".
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also accused the Aam Aadmi Party and the AIMIM of colluding with the BJP, saying they were "informal alliance partners" of the ruling party.
He, however, said in Himachal Pradesh the Congress put up a good show despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's high decibel campaign.
"For us, the Gujarat results show the need for introspection and for taking tough decisions. In Gujarat the election results have been very disappointing and are far below our expectations. It is a very sad reflection on the state's organisation," he told reporters.
Asked who were responsible for the poor performance of Congress in Gujarat, Ramesh said the local leadership and admitted there were shortcomings in the party's campaign there.
"There have been shortcomings in Gujarat unit and we will have to work on them. In the next election, our vote share would come back to 40 per cent," the Congress leader claimed.
"The BJP has lost miserably in Himachal Pradesh, given the fact that the prime minister campaigned extensively besides BJP president J P Nadda and Union minister Anurag Thakur, both of who hail from Himachal, the BJP has still lost," Ramesh alleged.
He also blamed the AAP and the AIMIM for the poor performance of Congress, saying both the parties were BJP's "informal alliance partners" in Gujarat.
"(AIMIM chief Asaduddin) Owaisi's role in our politics has became amply clear. Both the AAP and AIMIM have been getting the active support of the BJP and they have cut into the Congress vote bank," he said.
Ramesh also said that an atmosphere of fear was created in Gujarat to ensure that many sections of society who supported the Congress do not come out and vote.
"In Himachal, we have won even though our vote share is less," he said, adding that winning 40 seats out of 68 is a big thing to achieve against a formidable BJP.
He credited the Congress' promise to restore the old pension scheme as one of the primary reasons for the party's success in Himachal. He said the party leadership was committed to implement it at the earliest. (PTI)
Senior BJP leaders Rajnath Singh, B S Yediyurappa and Arjun Munda were appointed on Friday as central observers for the meeting of the party's new MLAs in Gujarat to pick the next chief minister.
The BJP registered a historic victory in Gujarat on Thursday by clinching 156 seats in the 182-member House.
The BJP has called a meeting of its newly elected legislators on Saturday morning to elect the legislature party leader who will be the next chief minister.
The BJP has announced earlier that Bhupendra Patel will continue as its chief minister in the state. (PTI)
The verdict on December 8, 2022, has given a fillip to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the battle that lies ahead in 2024.
With a historic win in his home state Gujarat, his position is even more invincible. Just a division of the Opposition votes doesn’t explain the surge — the BJP won more seats by getting more than 50% of the votes (53%), upping its vote share by 4%, despite being in power for 27 long years. That’s no mean achievement — and calls for deeper study.
But the 2022 story isn’t so much about the BJP. It was expected to retain Gujarat and the Prime Minister pulled out all the stops. The story is more about the caving-in of the Congress in another big state of India — and, by so doing, strengthening the BJP on the road to 2024.
It is hardly a secret that when the Congress has lost big states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, or Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in what was a unified Andhra Pradesh, which catapulted the party to power in 2004 — it has not been able to regain any.
Read The Neerja Chowdhury Column here
Sangita Rajendra Patil (46), who hails from Maharashtra’s Pachora tehsil, registered an impressive win from Surat’s Limbayat Assembly constituency on Thursday. Sangita, or Sangitaben as she is now called, married into a Maharashtrian family in Surat about 30 years ago and is now a third-time BJP MLA.
“I am proud of my Maharashtrian roots,” Sangita told The Indian Express over phone from Surat. “Yesterday, in my celebratory rally I deliberately wore Maharashtrian clothes and jewellery,” she added.
Sangita won her first election in 2012. On Thursday, she defeated her closest rival, Aam Aadmi Party’s Pankajbhai Tayade by over 57,000 votes while Congress’s Gopal Patil stood a distant third.
Sangita hails from Sarve village in Pachora tehsil of Jalgaon district. Her father served as a policeman and had six children, four daughters and a son. In 1995, Sangita married Rajendra Patil, whose family hailed from Maharashtra’s Dhule. Her in-laws stayed in Limbayat area of Surat, which is known to house migrants from Maharashtra’s Khandesh area.
Pavan Khengre writes
The number of women candidates winning the Gujarat Assembly polls rose marginally as 15 of them emerged victorious this time as compared to 13 in the last election.
Out of the 15 winners, 14 belong to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while one is from the Congress. A total of 139 women candidates from different political parties and independents were in the fray this time.
In 2012, the number of winning women candidates stood at 16. In the 2017 election, 13 women had won. But one of them died in December 2021, after which the seat fell vacant.
This time, the BJP had given tickets to a total of 18 women, while the grand old party had fielded 14 such candidates.
Some of these successful BJP women candidates attributed their victory to the hard work of party workers and the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state BJP chief C R Paatil.
BJP's Sangita Patil, who won from Limbayat in Surat city, credited her victory to the page committee.
"Because of the 'brahmastra' of the page committee, party workers consulted every household. Thanks to that, BJP got this positive result in the entire state. The hard work of PM Modi, organisational skill of C R Paatil and developmental work of CM Bhupendra Patel also paid off," she told reporters.
Bhanuben Babaria, who clinched the Rajkot Rural seat as a BJP nominee, hailed the hard work of party workers for the saffron outfit's resounding victory.
"People are happy with the way PM Modi is working in the country. They are experiencing peace and prosperity. People are happy with the leadership of (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah, C R Paatil and CM Bhupendra Patel," she said.
In the elections held on December 1 and 5, the BJP won 156 seats, 17 went to Congress and five to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Both the the BJP and Congress accommodated more number of Dalit and Tribal women candidates this time as compared to the 2017 elections. Four of the winning women candidates are from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community and two belong to the Scheduled Tribe (ST).
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had fielded five women candidates, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 12. None of them could make it to the state assembly.
Six of the successful women candidates are sitting MLAs, including all the five of the BJP and one of Congress.
In Rajkot West, which was held by former chief minister Vijay Rupani, BJP candidate Dr Darshita Shah defeated her nearest rival from Congress Mansukh Kalariya by a victory margin of 1.05 lakh votes.
In the Vadodara (city) seat, the victory margin for sitting MLA Manisha Vakil was over 98,000. (PTI)
The Opposition reacted sharply to the BJP’s win in Gujarat, saying the “victory was a confirmation of the deep communal polarisation that has been engineered by the BJP-RSS” and that the saffron party funded “the AAP to divide the Congress votes” in the state.
In its official statement on the results Thursday, The CPI(M) called “the BJP’s seventh successive victory” in Gujarat “a confirmation of the deep communal polarisation that has been engineered by the BJP-RSS over the last three decades”. “The projection of a pan-Hindu identity along with the rhetoric about Gujarati pride have overcome the more vital issues like price rise, unemployment and poor public health and educational facilities,” it said. Read More
For the Congress, more than issues that the BJP attacked it for — Medha Patkar joining the Bharat Jodo Yatra, or the “aukat” and “Raavan” remarks by its leaders against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among others — it was the perception that the “Congress MLA is an easy defector” that sealed the party’s fate, say Congress leaders.
As the party nursed the wounds after its worst defeat, and stared at a bleak future in Gujarat, finishing with just 17 seats and a vote share of 27%, Congress general secretary in charge of the state, Raghu Sharma, resigned on Thursday even as the results came in.
“We lost the confidence of the voter, who was not sure that if he or she voted for our candidate, whether the latter would stay with the party,” said a national Congress leader. This trend of defection, which began ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections, when nearly a dozen Congress MLAs joined BJP, continued even in 2022. In the end, at least 19 former Congressmen got BJP tickets this time, with many finishing winners.
Thus, the party could neither secure the seats in the tribal belt nor win the minority-dominated constituencies. Besides the nagging faults — such as factionalism, a late and low-key campaign lacking imagination, and a shoestring budget — the Congress leadership failed to gauge the damage that AAP was to cause it. “The AAP took away many of our votes. It was a party without baggage, while we have so much of it,” a senior Congress leader said. This leader credited AAP for talking about the “basic issues”, which, he said, Congress failed to raise. Read More
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel submitted the resignation of his government to Governor Acharya Devvrat. He will be taking oath as the CM again on December 12.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the Limkheda Assembly seat in Gujarat's Dahod district where 2002 riots victim Bilkis Bano once lived.
The candidate of the opposition Congress which had promised to revoke the remission granted by the BJP-led state government to 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case ended up third, polling 8,000 votes. Bano was a resident of Randhikpur village in the tribal-dominated Dahod district.
Sitting BJP MLA Shailesh Bhabhor defeated his closest rival, Aam Aadmi Party's Naresh Baria by nearly 4,000 votes. The premature release of 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case became an issue in the election campaign, with the Congress mentioning it in its manifesto and vowing to ensure justice for her. (PTI)
The share of NOTA votes in the Gujarat Assembly elections fell by more than nine per cent from 2017, with the highest of 7,331 such votes polled in Khedbrahma seat this time.
According to Election Commission data, 5,01,202 or 1.5 per cent votes polled this election in the state were NOTA, down from 5,51,594 in the 2017 assembly elections. The highest number of 7,331 NOTA votes were polled in Khedbrahma seat, followed by 5,213 in Danta and 5,093 in Chhota Udaipur.
The Devgadhbaria seat saw 4,821 NOTA votes, Shehra 4,708, Nizar 4,465, Bardoli 4,211, Daskroi 4,189, Dharamppur 4,189, Choryasi 4,169, Sankheda 4,143, Vadodara City 4,022 and Kaprada 4,020, among others.
As the BJP broke all records to return to power in Gujarat for the seventh consecutive time, Suhas Palshikar wrote: “What the BJP has done in Gujarat is to capture the entire gamut of public discourse and political culture. As a result, any potential challenger to the BJP there will either have to display extra-ordinary political skills to alter the ground on which political contestation unfolds or simply agree to play the game by the rules of rhetoric set by the BJP.” Click Here to read the Opinion piece.
The BJP’s record-breaking victory in Gujarat illustrates the success of its booth micromanagement that complemented the popularity and the trust Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoys among the electorate, while the absence of a similar strategy and organisational failure to effect timely changes cost it in Himachal Pradesh.
On the back of Modi’s intense campaign and a meticulously planned organisational strategy by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP won more than 150 seats in Gujarat, where it lost a few layers of sheen in 2017. This time, the BJP not only broke its personal best of 127 seats from the 2002 Assembly polls, which was held in the aftermath of the post-Godhra riots, it also eclipsed the Congress’s record of 149 seats from 1985 that came on the back of a sympathy wave created by Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Read More
With Gujarat voting the BJP back for the seventh straight time, this election has made history in the state: it gave the party over 50 per cent of the popular vote and the highest seat tally in the House at 150 plus minus a ‘Hindutva wave’ but at the same time making room for a new political party in the Opposition space.
The key takeaways of the 2022 election are the formidable, undiminished sway Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds over his home state; the readiness of a section of the voters to accept an “outsider,” and the rejection of the fatigued Congress. Read More
Good Morning and welcome back to our Live Blog. Here, we will disect the results of the Gujarat Assembly polls, that were declared yesterday, for you and help understand the reasons behind the BJP's record win in the state. Keep following this space for latest news and analysis
As the counting progressed, the BJP seemed poised for a record win, going past the 150-mark in the 182-member Assembly. While the AAP has made considerable gains in the Patidar and tribal seats, it was the worst show by the Congress this time, failing to capitalise on the gains it had made in the 2017 polls. The counting of votes began at 8 am. Here's the full list of winners
Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and Patidar leader Hardik Patel on Thursday defeated Amarsinh Thakor of the Aam Aadmi Party in urban Viramgram assembly by 51707 votes.
Lakhabhai Bharwad of Congress, the sitting MLA of Viramgram, polled 42412 votes. A native of Chandranagar village in Viramgam taluka, Hardik Patel was born and brought up in Viramgam town. He shot into prominence following the 2015 Patidar agitation for reservation in jobs, which he led. That agitation was widely credited for an impressive performance by the Congress party in 2017. While Patel polled 98627 votes, Thakor got 47072 votes. Read more
In complete reversal of the 2017 outcome, the Congress was completely routed in Saurashtra-Kutch, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) set to sweep more than 40 of the 54 seats in the agrarian region according to trends from the counting of votes for the 2022 Assembly election.
The ruling party was set for victories in all eight seats in Rajkot district, six in Bhavnagar district, five in Kutch district, four each in Surendranagar, Gir Somnath and Jamnagar districts, three each in Morbi, Junagadh and Amreli districts and one in Botad. Hurt in parts by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Congress, which had won 30 out of 54 seats in 2017, was fencing victories only in Porbandar in Porbandar district, Manavadar in Junagadh, Abdasa in Kutch district, and was leading in Savarkundla seat in Amreli district. Gopal Kateshiya writes
Cricketer Ravindra Jadeja’s wife Rivaba Jadeja made an impressive debut into electoral politics as she defeated her nearest rival in the Jamnagar North constituency by 53570 votes.
After 17 rounds of voting, Rivaba Jadeja had won 88110 votes, while her nearest rival Karshan Karmur of Aam Aadmi Party had polled 34818 votes, the Election Commission said. The Congress party’s Bipendrasinh Jadeja finished third with 23088 votes. Read more
The BJP’s record-breaking victory in Gujarat illustrates the success of its booth micromanagement that complemented the popularity and the trust Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoys among the electorate, while the absence of a similar strategy and organisational failure to effect timely changes cost it in Himachal Pradesh.
On the back of Modi’s intense campaign and a meticulously planned organisational strategy by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP won more than 150 seats in Gujarat, where it lost a few layers of sheen in 2017. This time, the BJP not only broke its personal best of 127 seats from the 2002 Assembly polls, which was held in the aftermath of the post-Godhra riots, it also eclipsed the Congress’s record of 149 seats from 1985 that came on the back of a sympathy wave created by Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Liz Mathew writes
The Aam Adami Party has made an "impressive entry' into the Bharatiya Janata Party's bastion of Gujarat, giving a "tough fight" to the ruling outfit in the just concluded Assembly polls, state AAP president Gopal Italia said on Thursday. The Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit contested 181 out of the total 182 Assembly seats in Gujarat, but end up winning just five seats on Thursday, securing about 13 per cent vote share.
Italia termed the AAP's win in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state as "victory of Kejriwal's politics of honesty" and vowed to make the party a "formidable challenger" of the BJP in Gujarat in the coming years. "It's a historic day as the Aam Adami Party today made an impressive entry into Gujarat, which is the BJP stronghold. We gave a tough fight to the rival and won five seats. It's a revolution in Gujarat and victory of Arvind Kejriwal's honest politics," he said at a press conference in Surat.
The AAP's Gujarat unit chief, who contested from the Katargam Assembly seat in Surat district, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the BJP. (PTI)
THE TWO Assembly seats falling under the Lok Sabha constituency of state BJP president C R Paatil, Surat East and Limbayat, saw a tough contest. In Surat East, the BJP’s Arvind Rana and the Congress’s Aslam Cyclewala kept trading places till the 18th round, after which Rana won by over 14,000 votes. The Aam Aadmi Party had withdrawn from this seat, with over 92,000 Muslim voters, leaving the contest between the BJP, Congress and the AIMIM. Asaduddin Owaisi held three rallies in Surat in support of the party’s candidate.
Limbayat, a seat with a high migrant population and over 30% Muslim vote, had the highest number of candidates in the fray, 44. BJP candidate Sangita Patil and the Congress’s Gopal Patil similarly kept swapping the lead position here, before Sangita pulled ahead after the 15th round and won by a comfortable margin of 49,000-plus votes. Read more
In a quick turnaround from its resurgence in the Saurashtra-Kutch region that had given the ruling BJP a mighty scare five years ago, the Congress bit the dust, managing to win only three out of 54 seats in the 2022 Assembly elections, whose results were announced on Thursday. The agrarian region saw a near clean sweep by the ruling party.
In the 2017 Assembly election, which was held in the backdrop of the Patidar quota stir, the Congress had doubled its tally in Saurashtra-Kutch to 30, while the BJP’s total had shrunk to 23. Thanks to its rally in Saurashtra — a region dominated by Patidar voters — the Congress had managed to win 77 seats in the state while reducing the BJP to 99, just marginally above the halfway mark. Read more
The BJP’s historic victory in Gujarat is being seen as a comprehensive win of the macro and micro strategies of the party with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at its centre.
“Narendrabhai is our trump card and the entire strategy of the party revolves around him. He has got an amazing emotional bonding with the people of Gujarat that has been fetching unprecedented results for the party. In this election, too, the main strategy of the party was to seek votes projecting him. Like in the past, it got us unprecedented results,” said a BJP leader. Parimal A Dabhi writes
If Gujarat exemplifies the current invincibility of the BJP with almost double the vote share of its nearest rival in the state, Himachal Pradesh too brings into sharp focus the difficulties in displacing the BJP — Congress and BJP are practically tied there in terms of vote share. Both assembly outcomes alert us to the fact that the second dominant party system that emerged in 2014 is not showing any signs of decline. In a system dominated by one party, expectations of the Opposition often hinge on the ultimate possibility of voter fatigue if not voter response to genuine economic woes. Such expectations tend to ignore the capacity of the dominant party to keep the voters hooked to its rhetoric and leadership. Suhas Palshikar writes
Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in Gujarat elections while saying that projects “taken away” from Maharashtra contributed to the result.
The result in Gujarat was on expected lines and the election was once again fought under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership which was the reason why people voted in large numbers, Thackeray, a former BJP ally, said in a statement here. Read more
Addressing party workers, Modi says Gujarat's love for the BJP despite the party being in power for 25 years is "unprecedented, they have broken all records and written history."
In his address to BJP workers at the party headquarters in Delhi, after it swept the Gujarat elections, PM Narendra Modi said, "The results of Gujarat have proved how strong is the desire of the common man for a developed India. The message is clear that whenever there is a challenge before the country, people show their faith in BJP."
In order to develop India, PM Modi, during his speech at BJP headquarters in Delhi, said that the entire nation must work together to achieve it. "Would like to thank India for their blessings," Modi said.
PM Narendra Modi said that women voted for the BJP in large numbers. "Not just do they vote for us, but they also bless us," he said.
In his address to BJP party workers in Delhi, after the party swept the Gujarat elections, PM Modi on Thursday said, "people of India know that shortcut politics will damage the country".
"The people of Gujarat have created a record in breaking record," said PM Modi in an address to BJP workers as the party swept the Gujarat elections on Thursday. "By giving the biggest mandate in the history of Gujarat to the BJP, the people of the state have created a new history. Voted for BJP rising above caste, class, community and all kinds of divisions," he said.
PM Narendra Modi on Thursday said that a large number of youth voted in Gujarat. "...This shows they believe in vision and commitment which BJP has," he said.
Addressing BJP workers at the party headquarters, PM Narendra Modi Thursday said, "Support to BJP shows people's anger against dynasty rule and corruption rising".
While addressing party workers at the BJP headquarters in Delhi, BJP president JP Nadda said that it was a record win in Gujarat under the prime minister's leadership. '... We got 52.5% vote share. Congress's voting percentage dropped to 27.3. A new party came to insult Gujarat, leader of that party said that our govt is coming to Gujarat. He should now apologize to people,' he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday began his address to BJP's workers at the party headquarters in New Delhi, as it saw a massive victory in Gujarat.
BJP president JP Nadda said that it was the "tireless efforts" with which PM Narendra Modi had served Gujarat, which reflected in Thursday's elections, which saw the party set a record-winning victory.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday registered its first-ever victory in Gujarat's Jhagadia Assembly seat, where its candidate Ritesh Vasava defeated heavyweight tribal leader and seven-time MLA Chhotubhai Vasava by 23,500 votes. Ritesh Vasava bagged 89,933 votes, while Chhotubhai Vasava secured 66,433 ballots.
Seventy-eight year old Chhotubhai Vasava lost to his one-time aide Ritesh Vasava in the Scheduled Tribes-reserved constituency in Bharuch district. This was for the first time the BJP has won this Assembly seat. (PTI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the BJP's headquarters in New Delhi on Thursday and is likely to address party workers shortly, as the BJP is inching towards a massive victory in Gujarat.
The BJP’s thumping majority in Gujarat makes it clear that Narendra Modi is set to be the favourite to sweep the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Even though Modi left Gujarat when he became Prime Minister, he continues to exercise his sway on the state through proxies. And, it is Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that helped the BJP and almost eliminated the Congress in Gujarat.
The Gujarat Assembly is almost Congress-mukt and there will likely be an exodus of Congress members to the BJP. They will then accept PM Modi’s “vikas” formula. Read more
The BJP has registered a stunning win in the 2022 Gujarat elections. I use the word stunning because this is the seventh consecutive time the BJP has won the state and if we include the 1990 election, where BJP and Janata Dal fought in an alliance and swept the seats that they contested, the count goes up to eight. There have been many variables in the BJP’s success in Gujarat over the last three decades but one constant has been Narendra Modi. In different circumstances, adopting different methods he has strengthened the BJP, making it the force that it is now. I will broadly divide his efforts into two parts – overcoming the crisis of electability and overcoming the crisis of governability. Shashi Shekhar Vempati writes
BJP candidate Alpesh Thakor won his seat from Gandhinagar South.
Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, who contested from the Congress, overcome early loses and won the Vadgam assembly seat on Thursday.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah reached the BJP headquarters in New Delhi Thursday, after the party is heading towards record-winning victory in Gujarat, securing 156 seats (according to trends) in the 182-seat Assembly. PM Modi is also expected to arrive at the headquarters and is scheduled to address the party workers.