Vibha Sharma
New Delhi, November 17
While Gujarat heads for a triangular contest, perhaps for the first time in its electoral history with the BJP, the Congress and the AAP making the three angles, the ruling BJP is hoping for a comeback riding on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regular poll pitch—double engine development—and that the vote for ‘kamal’ is a “direct vote for him”.
That has also been the BJP’s strategy in the just-concluded Himachal Pradesh election and countless other states where it was fighting the crucial anti-incumbency factor.
In Gujarat, it is a massive anti-incumbency factor the BJP is looking at, a reason why it dropped senior ministers and sitting MLAs and opted for new faces.
While the ruling party candidates are seeking votes in the PM’s name, rival Congress is said to be running a “silent campaign” (as also cautioned by PM Modi in one of his speeches) in contrast to an aggressive one led by Rahul Gandhi in 2017 with the young force of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani who have opted out of the party like many other Congress leaders in the past five years.
In the absence of top leaders from the campaign so far, the Congress is focusing on “local issues” and “ignoring” PM Modi because past experience shows that “nothing sticks on him”, observers say.
Gandhi, who has so far been concentrating on his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, is expected to take a break and join the campaign in Gujarat around November 22.
Also, the party, moving ahead of the theory of ‘KHAM’ (Kshatriyas, OBCs, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim), is now working on ‘BADAM’ this time which includes OBC, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, say experts, mostly the same combination the BJP is working on minus the minority community which the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is targetting.
“The Congress enjoys a rural grip among the farmers, Adivasis, Dalits, cattle growers, dairy farmers and other marginalised communities. It remains to be seen how successful it is in keeping them this time,” they add.
Whether the AIMIM proves to be a spoiler for the Congress or the AAP also remains to be seen as Muslims do not figure in the BJP’s target audience.
Muslims comprise around nine per cent of the population in the state.
AAP, meanwhile, is a “challenger’ for the Congress, and an “irritant” for the BJP, though both of them call it a “B team” of the other. The Congress, which often describes the AAP and the AIMIM as the BJP’s “B team”, has also followed its freebie promises in rural areas.
While Kejriwal, who has been promising education and health care plus free electricity, among a slew of freebies, and avoiding references to the Muslim issues or the Bilkis Bano case, seems to have gone low-key, of late. The observers say he is finding traction from those looking for an alternative to the BJP and the Congress.
Hindutva or nationalism is BJP’s stronghold, and Kejriwal can expect to cut into fence-sitter Hindu voters in the urban areas.
