New Delhi, December 7
The ruling BJP is looking to set records and the Congress is hoping for a revival ahead of the Gujarat election verdict which will be out on Thursday.
Powered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personalised campaign in his home state, the BJP in Gujarat expects its final tally to surpass the party’s 2002 record of the best-ever win when it bagged 127 of the 182 seats and a vote share of 49.85 per cent.
The BJP is hoping to set one record — of beating the Congress’s phenomenal 1985 performance of 149 seats with 55.55 per cent of all votes polled. The 1985 Gujarat election was the Congress party’s dream run with late Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki powering the party’s victory through the famous KHAM (Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims) voter base experiment which succeeded hugely.
For the Congress, Thursday’s verdict would mean many things. Party leaders from the state are hoping to sustain their 2017 performance of winning 77 seats, which was the best since 1985, a record setting year for the grand old party which went consistently downhill after that, managing to give the BJP jitters only in 2017.
With the 2017’s favourable matrix for the Congress — the Patidar agitation, youth force influenced by the Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor, Jignesh Mevani combine and the fiery campaign by its then president Rahul Gandhi —- missing this time, it remains to be seen whether the party will even touch its 2017 mark.
Any decline from the 2017 threshold would deal a fatal blow to the Congress, already facing electoral decline for two years. AAP’s challenge in Gujarat is real with the Congress suffering a jolt everywhere the Arvind Kejriwal-led party has entered, be it Delhi, Punjab, Goa or UP. Congress leaders have openly attacked AAP as BJP’s B-team. For AAP too, tomorrow’s election cycle in Gujarat and HP is key to the national ambitions of the Delhi CM.
