Gujarat Watch: All Eyes On PM Modi, The Leader Carrying The Weight Of All 182 Assembly Seats

Gujarat Election 2022: Notwithstanding the pre-poll surveys that predict up to 139 seats for BJP, the party is facing its toughest challenge in 30 years. But PM Modi knows only he can turn the tide

Ahmedabad: There is a striking similarity between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cricketing legend Mahendra Dhoni. Both are great finishers — Dhoni is often known to walk in quietly at number six when the chips are down and hit the winning six on the last ball. Modi walks in waving at one and all during the slog overs of an election campaign, makes a strong speech or two that establishes him as the true Gujarati manoos, and walks out a winner.

The similarity, however, ends there. Dhoni used to walk in after the others had batted, while Modi, especially in the case of the two-phase Gujarat elections in December 2022, is the opening as well as the slog-over batsman who is carrying the weight of all 182 seats on his shoulders. The others — the chief minister or the state president — are onlookers and cheerleaders running the logistical errands.

The BJP is facing its toughest challenge in 30 years — notwithstanding the pre-poll surveys that predict up to a dizzy 139 seats out of 182 in Gujarat, which is at least 12 more than the BJP’s best performance under the strident Hindutva umbrella under the leadership of Modi in 2002.

The issues so obviously staring in the face of the state are diametrically in sharp contrast to the surveys that appear to be stuck in 2002. But few can dare say the BJP could lose. The reason is simple: Modi Hai To Mumkin Hai (everything is possible with Modi around). But 2022 goes a step further: Modi Hai Toh Hi Mumkin Hai (It is possible only if Modi is around).

There is little gainsaying that there is precious little to talk home about the ground performance of the Gujarat government, be it under Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel or his sacked predecessor Vijay Rupani, though the latter was better given the tough Covid-19 circumstances he weathered.

Why Is Gujarat Tough For BJP This Time Around?      

The BJP, which always has its ears to the ground even when there are no elections around, immediately picked lessons from the Gujarat 2017 results where it came perilously close to defeat.

The first change was to bring in Navsari (South Gujarat) MP CR Paatil, who had won his Lok Sabha seat with the country’s highest margin of 6.89 lakh votes and was among the key persons in Modi’s Varanasi campaign, as the party’s Gujarat unit president. Subsequently, another Varanasi backroom boy, Bihar co-incharge and who is on the same page as Paatil, Ratnakar, was made the general secretary (organisation).

Paatil did two crucial things. One, aware that the Vijay Rupani government’s ministers as well as other MLAs and MPs had been vociferously complaining that their voices were being shouted down by the bureaucrats, CR Bhai — as he is called in the state — directed that all cabinet ministers should sit at the BJP headquarters, Shri Kamalam, and resolve issues of the elected representatives.

Though this set him on a collision course with Rupani, the latter was also forced to have Paatil as one of his ministerial advisers, in the same way as all ministers had advisers from the organisation. The message was clear: complaints by the elected representatives are the voices from the ground and they can’t be ignored. The seeds of Rupani’s exit were sown here and took strong root after the Covid-19 crisis.

The second thing that Paatil did was that he got as many as 21 key Congress MLAs and other bright faces to join the BJP — all these were not randomly picked on a first-come-first-served basis but as a well-thought-out plan. OBC leader Alpesh Thakor and aggressive Patidar youngster Hardik Patel are in the BJP now, senior Koli community leader and sitting Congress MLA Kunwarji Bavalia and tribal MLAs from South Gujarat’s Valsad Jitubhai Chaudhary and Dangs Mangal Gavit are a few instances. 

How these caste combinations work remains to be seen, but these efforts to tackle the siege within seem to have been dwarfed by other policy and governance-related realities.

It was for the first time that the BJP in Gujarat as well as the Centre had to buckle under the pressure of Adivasis, led by Congress’ aggressive tribal leader Anant Patel, to withdraw the much-vaunted Par-Tapi-Narmada Riverlink project. This project is part of the larger national river-linking plan of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.          

It was also for the first time that the BJP government in Gujarat had to roll back a legislation — on control of cattle menace — passed with brute majority and after a debate during the state assembly’s budget session that had continued until midnight. The withdrawal of the legislation, which had already reached the Raj Bhavan for the Governor’s final stamp and signature, was a result of a massive agitation from the maldhari (cattle rearers) community.

The Bhupendra Patel government faced as many as 32 agitations of varying intensity, largely from the government staff fighting against outsourcing of jobs and work as well as the contract system. This forced the government to constitute a ministerial committee to resolve all issues, but it could cut little ice.

It was unusual for the police force to resort to agitational measures. A disciplined and regimented force, the police seldom participate in public protests. Thousands of families of the police constabulary and para-police force came out on the streets demanding a hike in their basic grade pay.

It was after AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal promised the police force that his party, if elected, would ensure that Gujarat has the best paid police force in the country that the BJP government hurriedly announced a Rs 550-crore package for the police. Curiously, minutes after Kejriwal made this announcement, the WhatsApp display images of hundreds of policemen had changed to pictures of Kejriwal.

And what has queered the pitch more is the October 30 Morbi bridge collapse that claimed at least 135 lives, where political parties, social media, the media and the local people came down on the ruling party like a tonne of bricks.

It was after severe criticism and allegations that the government finally suspended the chief officer of the Morbi Municipality. The government’s own public prosecutors told a local court that the Oreva Group, the company owned by Jaisukh Patel that was outsourced the maintenance work of the bridge, was not qualified for the work but was still awarded the contract without inviting tenders. Months before Morbi, a huge hooch tragedy in Botad district – again in the Saurashtra region which has 48 seats – became a reason for ridicule and serious allegations of corruption by the opposition parties in the implementation of the state’s prohibition laws. The continuous seizures of drugs from Gujarat’s coast running into many thousand crores is also an issue that the Opposition has been raising.

‘I have made this Gujarat’

It didn’t take long for Modi to see the full picture. A master politician who not only has his ears to the ground but also has his eyes set on the long-term future, at least until the2024 Lok Sabha elections, Modi understood that it was only he who could turn the tide.

"Aa Gujarat mai bnavyu chhe (I have made this Gujarat),” the PM gave a new slogan on Sunday. During his 25-minute-long speech at a public meeting in Kaprada, he also made the audience chant the line several times.

It wasn’t without reason that the PM toured Gujarat four times in October – and many more times since April. Until he left Gujarat after his last three-day tour concluded on October 31, Modi himself announced or laid foundation stones for projects worth a mind boggling Rs 2,00,000 crore.

And these are besides the dozens of others announced by Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. Notwithstanding the investments promised at the high-octane Defence Expo in Gujarat. Notwithstanding the multi-thousand crores worth of projects that took flight from Maharashtra to land in Modi and Shah’s home state.

With 2024 not far and elections to several states that largely accounted for the BJP’s tally in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections even closer, PM Modi can’t afford to lose Gujarat, and nor will it do to just scrape through like 2017. With 99 seats in 2017, BJP rescued itself from defeat by eight seats given that 92 is the number needed for a simple majority in the 182-member House. The Congress got 77. Here too, it was one mistake by Congress veteran Mani Shanker Aiyar who called Modi “neech” that helped the BJP and the latter grabbed the insult with both hands to use it in their favour.

Modi went a step further to allege that a conspiracy was hatched against him at a dinner at the house of Aiyar attended by top retired bureaucrats and diplomats, reportedly including former Pakistan diplomats, and indicated that there was a sinister design to instal a Muslim — read Congress veteran Ahmed Patel — as chief minister. 

The AAP Challenge        

The Congress calls the AAP a B-team of the BJP. It appeared so when Kejriwal began his Gujarat forays in the rural areas with the promise of free electricity, which immediately caught the attention of the harried farmers and the rural populace besides his better school, better hospital promise. Feeling the heat, the Congress had also followed with exactly the same freebie promises in rural areas, but took solace in the fact that the AAP doesn’t yet have that network to mobilise the voters.   

Until then, the BJP was happy in the conventional logic of most political parties, pundits and the media alike that a third player in Gujarat would by default mean a bad omen for the Congress, while the party with Modi’s blessings would remain oblivious to the world outside and that a victory is in their DNA. The common understanding was that two parties would split the anti-BJP votes and the lotus would bloom again.

This was so until Kejriwal stepped up an aggressive campaign in the urban areas looking at the fringe voters and those from the lower economic classes, while the ‘Modi-fied’ middle-classes remained out of bounds for all opposition parties. His dinner with an autorickshaw driver, promises for the lower-level police staff, free electricity and inviting a Dalit family at his home in Delhi – besides his schools and mohalla clinics as the permanent showcase — did appear to sound an alarm bell.

There was a neat well-defined urban-rural divide in the 2017 election results where the BJP got its 66 ‘sure-shot’ seats out in the tally of 99 from the cities and the towns, while the Congress scored well in the rural areas. The AAP seems to have disrupted this arrangement, and is trying to gorge on the cities and the villages together.

The AAP is unlikely to win, but Kejriwal knows that even if his party occupies the principal opposition space, it would be an achievement that could be leveraged in the future. This situation is a nightmare for the BJP, which has so far done well with its “Congress-mukt Bharat” refrain. The AAP holds the potential to disrupt this applecart.     

What about the Congress vis-à-vis the BJP?

It was none other than Modi who saw through the opposition party’s low-profile positioning when he exhorted his party workers at a recent public meeting not to be carried away by any belief that the Congress had given a walkover. He said the Congress had outsourced all the lung power to AAP and was quietly working one-to-one with the electorate.

BJP sources claim the Congress may not appear so much of a huge challenge since its target audience largely doesn’t criss-cross with that of the saffron party, but AAP with its young enthusiastic lot is trying to leverage its urban USP while experimenting with the rural.

However, BJP strategists have understood that the Patidars – both in rural and urban regions – are no longer en bloc saffron voters and remain split. Hardik has long lost his Patidar leader appeal but poaching him was important since he indeed remained an important force for the Congress. Similarly, Alpesh Thakor is not even as big but he together with Hardik and Jignesh formed a formidable troika. So it had to be broken.

If the Congress is returning to its back-to-basics Kshatriya (OBC), Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim (KHAM) theory, the BJP knows it must recover its losses at other places through this huge mass of voters. Minus 9% Muslims, the rest form a huge 75% population.

This explains why it was Amit Shah who led the party’s recently concluded Gujarat Gaurav Yatra from South Gujarat, while the Prime Minister who has earlier held rallies in the tribal regions, on Sunday addresses his first rally from the tribal-dominated Valsad district — Modi’s first rally after the announcement of the election dates. Similarly, the BJP has the scattered OBC vote on top priority.  

As of today, Gujarat poll outcome is not anybody’s guess this time. Over to Narendra Damodardas Modi, 72, and batting.

(The author is a senior journalist and Founder Editor, Development News Network [DNN], Gujarat.)

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