The party will leave no stones unturned to retain its fortress of Gujarat with a two-third majority.
New Delhi: After retaining four states, including the prize catch of Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had set its eye on Gujarat which it has ruled for more than two decades. The two-day visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where he had participated in the Gujarat Panchayat Mahasammelan and other similar people outreach events, highlights that the BJP will leave no stone unturned to retain its fortress of Gujarat. The state will go for polls in December this year. Multiple sources within the Gujarat BJP had confirmed that the internal survey conducted by the party is predicting that the BJP will retain the state with a two-third majority and the results of four states which were recently declared had only strengthened the belief of the state unit and workers.
In the last three-weeks, many senior leaders from the Indian National Congress (INC) had joined the BJP, including two-time former MLA from Lunawada Hirabhai Patel, former Mehsana Congress president Rajendrasinh Darbar, party spokesperson Jayrajsinh Parmar, and former leader of the opposition in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Dinesh Sharma. Six Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) corporators from the Surat Municipal Corporation had also joined the BJP in recent months in the run-up to Assembly polls. The party is also conducting multiple internal surveys on all the 182-Assembly seats to find out about local anti-incumbency against MLAs, if any.
One senior state Vice-President of BJP said, “The party’s leadership’s focus is now on Gujarat. In the next few months, you will see many visits by the Prime Minister and the Home minister. The state organization is well prepared for the elections. In the last five years, we have won every local bodies poll in the state. The change of the entire cabinet had generated a pro-incumbency in the state.” On the issue of opposition in Gujarat, he added, “Congress will be our main challenger, but this time they will struggle to cross 50 seats. It is good for a healthy democracy to have an opposition.”
In the 2017 Gujarat Assembly polls, the BJP had won 99 Assembly seats and had faced some serious resistance from the Congress which won 77 seats. Since long, Gujarat has been a bi-polar polity with the BJP and Congress as two prime players. In the last elections, the BJP polled 49.05% votes, while the grand-old-party polled 41.44% votes. This time, AAP will also try to put a challenge in front of the BJP at the cost of Congress.
Talking to The Sunday Guardian, Jayesh Amin, a political commentator who had covered the state widely, said, “BJP is working at the booth level since the last one-year. They had workers in more than 18,000 villages of the state. The central leadership is conducting surveys at the taluka (sub-division) level; ticket distribution will be decided after this feedback. The Congress had appointed a new president and leader of opposition, but it will not be an easy ride for them. As far as the Aam Aadmi Party is concerned, I don’t see them as serious contenders as they don’t have a strong organizational base in the state unlike in Punjab. They need to work for five years to emerge as a challenger. Those who won corporation elections on AAP tickets had joined the BJP in recent months. The BJP’s election machinery and feedback system in Gujarat looks unmatched.”