Rumblings in Gujarat: The BJP's nervousness in the face of Gujarat Elections is intriguing

by Guest Tue Oct 31, 2017 1:19 pm

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party president, Amit Shah, does not seem to be a man given to self-criticism, it is unlikely that he will ever admit that his Rajya Sabha adventure in August this year was a terrible mistake. On the contrary, he might be congratulating himself for executing an operation which, but for a last minute hitch, almost achieved its objective.

For those who may not remember, here's a brief flashback. Three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat were up for election, and the numbers in the state assembly ensured that the BJP would easily win two, and the Congress the third seat. The ruling party duly nominated Amit Shah and Smriti Zubin Irani; and the Congress fielded Ahmed Patel.

Since the Congress had 57 members of the legislative assembly in the state, and needed only 45 to win the seat, there was little doubt that Ahmed Patel - a party heavyweight in addition to being the political secretary of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi - would easily win a fifth consecutive term in the Upper House.

But Amit Shah had other ideas. Whether out of personal animus or from an insatiable desire to win, the BJP president pulled out all the stops to ensure the defeat of Ahmed Patel. Till July 26, the Congress had 57 MLAs. But six resigned over the next two days, precipitated by the departure of the former leader of Opposition in the Gujarat assembly, Shankarsinh Vaghela, from the Congress party.

In a declaration of war, Amit Shah decided to field a third candidate to take on Ahmed Patel. To add insult to injury, the third BJP candidate was a close Ahmed Patel aide, Balwantsinh Rajput, who had risen in the Congress ranks, thanks to Patel. The BJP declared Rajput its candidate on the same day that he resigned as Congress MLA and chief whip of the party in the state assembly.

Over the next few days, Shah activated the party's dirty tricks department and managed to "wean" away more than half a dozen Congress MLAs through a combination of threats and blandishments. The Congress, equally determined not to give up without a fight, ferried its remaining 44 MLAs to a Karnataka resort to keep them safe from the BJP's poaching operation.

Even so, on the day of the election on August 8, two more MLAs switched sides, leaving Patel with the support of just 42 Congress legislators. But the two Congress MLAs who cross-voted made the mistake of showing their slips to "unauthorized" persons. The Election Commission invalidated their votes. It was thanks to this decision that Ahmed Patel managed to scrape through and win the bitterly fought election.

On the face of it, Ahmed Patel did not score a handsome victory and Amit Shah's defeat was more a technical aberration. Yet, in retrospect, the August 8 result was of enormous significance for both the BJP and the Congress, and its after effects are still unfolding in Gujarat as it heads for crucial assembly elections this December.

As far as the BJP is concerned, Amit Shah's efforts to defeat Ahmed Patel smacked of a desperation that many found bewildering. Since 1995, the BJP has been winning election after election in Gujarat. Its dominance in the state only deepened after Narendra Modi took over as chief minister in 2001. The post-Godhra riots in the state in early 2002 may have shocked the world, but it only enhanced Modi's stature in his home state. He won three consecutive assembly elections before leveraging his "Gujarat model" to make a successful bid for national leadership in 2014.

Given that the two most powerful men in India - Modi and Shah - both hail from the state, and the BJP has spread its tentacles deep into urban and rural Gujarat, there was little need for Shah to deny the Congress a Rajya Sabha seat. But the no-holds-barred efforts made to break the Congress and defeat Ahmed Patel stemmed from a desire to annihilate the Opposition completely. It reflected the current BJP dispensation's insatiable - and anti-democratic - desire for complete control coupled with an overweening hubris that seems to be alienating important sections of the Gujarati populace.

Shah also calculated that Patel's defeat would be of great symbolic value - and demoralize the Congress party which has been in a comatose state for a long period in any case.
With Patel's victory, the opposite appears to have happened. In spite of the exit of Vaghela and his men, there is a new energy in the Grand Old Party that is evident on two fronts.
First, Rahul Gandhi is looking and sounding much more confident and self-assured than in elections past - with even critics conceding that he drew large and responsive crowds during his regular forays in Gujarat - and striking a chord among both farmers and traders with his acerbic attacks on demonetization, the goods and services tax and the general mismanagement by the Modi government of the Indian economy.

Second, and considerably more important, is the manner in which the Congress is drawing a range of leaders and forces to its fold. It is a reflection of the rumbling in Gujarat - a slow, low, below the radar, consistent, resonant murmur of discontent - that new political names from the state have made a mark on the national consciousness in the space of less than three years.
Modi and Shah may be synonymous with Gujarat, but no discussion on the upcoming assembly election can take place without a reference to Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakore. Hardik Patel, the convenor of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti, has been spearheading the demand for reservation in government jobs and college seats for the Patels since 2015. Even after being charged with sedition, put in jail and sent into exile, the 24-year-old has not lost his popularity or his clout - and has indicated his willingness to back the Congress since the BJP sought to mercilessly suppress the agitation he led.

Jignesh Mevani, 36, became a national figure after he led the protests against the public flogging of Dalit youths in Una in July 2016 and went on to highlight the caste discrimination still rampant in Gujarat.

And Alpesh Thakore, a leader of the other backward castes who has led many agitations against the illegal alcohol trade and stitched together a coalition of OBCs, Dalits, and adivasis in the state, recently joined the Congress. In a television interview, Thakore said he conducted a mass survey among over 25 lakh supporters on whether he should join the Congress or the BJP or stay away from politics. As many as 20 lakh, he claimed, backed his joining Congress and only 1.6 suggested BJP.
Hardik, Jignesh and Alpesh do not share the same politics or the same support base. But a stronger glue seems to have brought them on the same platform: a shared antipathy towards the ruling BJP and its refusal to listen - leave alone give space - to alternative voices and popular agitations that have been emerging from beneath the saffron blanket enveloping the state.

The biggest gain for the Congress is that it has become the magnet for all the forces - small, scattered and disparate as they may seem - ranged against the BJP in the state. The significance of this phenomenon could go well beyond Gujarat since it indicates that social and political movements may be shedding their long-held anti-Congressism after experiencing first-hand the exclusionary and authoritarian politics of the BJP.

The BJP leadership probably senses this, its anxiety manifest in the way it tried to defeat Ahmed Patel or in the unseemly manner in which it showered the state with sops right up to the delayed announcement of the election schedule.
Given the deep roots Hindutva has struck in Gujarat, the formidable organizational machinery of the saffron combine, and Narendra Modi's enduring "son of the soil" popularity, the chances of BJP losing the December election may seem in the realm of fantasy. But that is also what makes the BJP's palpable nervousness - rather than an easy confidence - all that more intriguing.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iNweh_cGKtQJ:https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/rumbling-in-gujarat-181827+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in

---
link to the actual article is not working, perhaps because of censorship or perhaps because of some technical reason.