How BJP overcame 2017 setback to be on course to win most seats ever in Gujarat - Hindustan Times
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How BJP overcame 2017 setback to be on course to win most seats ever in Gujarat

Dec 08, 2022 12:38 PM IST

After 2017, the party moved quickly on several fronts to address the concerns that damaged its electoral performance

On December 18, 2017, when the last vote in Gujarat was counted, the mood in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was less than upbeat. The party won its sixth straight assembly election, but its tally shrunk to below 100. The Congress posted its best results in a generation. The BJP suffered setbacks in its citadel of Saurashtra.

BJP supporters celebrate early leads for the party in Gujarat. (AP)
BJP supporters celebrate early leads for the party in Gujarat. (AP)

The celebrations were muted. The message from the top leadership – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last-leg campaign blitzkrieg pushed the party over the halfway mark – was clear: The rank and file will need to hit the ground running, and prevent the opponents from grabbing political space.

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“You can say that the preparations for 2022 began in 2017,” said a Gujarat BJP leader, requesting anonymity.

The 2017 poll was the first in the state after Modi moved to the Centre as Prime Minister. The BJP hoped for historic results. But the results were a wake-up call, one that the party took seriously.

“There was a lot of talk about the Gujarati asmita [pride]; people were jubilant that our chief minister was now the Prime Minister, but somehow there was complacency that the party will win with a decisive mandate and we failed to read the mood on the ground,” the leader cited above said.

The anger among farmers, small traders, and Dalits and an explosive quota agitation of Patidars hurt the BJP in an unprecedented way and stoked the feeling that a sense of complacency had set in.

“It was then we sat and decided that we need to revisit the old system of going back to the booths. In the last five years, we invested in addressing the concerns of the communities in addition to improving the model of governance,” the leader added.

Those efforts paid rich dividends on Thursday when the BJP sailed to a historic mandate in Gujarat. It was on course to win the most seats and highest vote share in the state ever, and demolish the Opposition even in its erstwhile citadels and seats the BJP had not won in a generation.

Organisational changes

After 2017, the party moved quickly on several fronts to address the concerns that damaged its electoral performance and an administrative overhaul was key to its performance in the 2022 polls.

“What gave us hope [in 2017] was that though our numbers had fallen, the vote share went up [from 47.85% in 2012 and to 49.1% in 2017]. So, changes were made at different stages to reclaim the lost ground,” the leader cited above explained.

Changes were first effected at the district and state levels. In July 2020, CR Patil, a three-time lawmaker, replaced Jitu Vaghani as the state unit president. The exit of Vaghani raised eyebrows within the party as many were not convinced by the decision of replacing a Patidar leader from Saurashtra with someone with roots in Maharashtra. The party’s performance in subsequent bypolls necessitated by the defection of eight Congress lawmakers to the BJP and the local body elections under Patil’s charge put to rest these doubts quickly.

More changes were in the offing. As the Covid pandemic exposed the deficiencies in the administration and stoked discontent, the leadership replaced Vijay Rupani with Bhupendra Patel as the chief minister. The entire council of ministers was changed as well merely 15 months before the polls.

The party gave no explanations for the change, but it was evident that the move was intended to blunt anti-incumbency. In Patel, the party wanted to present the chief minister with no baggage, a clean image, and low-key functioning.

“This is a cadre-based organisation where decision-making is a well-guarded process. When the decision was taken it was conveyed and accepted by the leaders, just as they accepted the decision to induct into the party Patidar leaders who had led a morcha against us,” said a second leader and a former legislator, requesting anonymity.

His reference was to Hardik Patel, who was the face of the Patidar agitation and given a ticket to contest from Viramgam.

Panna pramukhs

The party made room for Patidars leaders from other parties and began the process of invigorating the cadre at the booth level. Panna pramukhs or people in charge of one page of the electoral roll – the nerve centre of the party’s electioneering process - were given targets to include at least one member from each family in their jurisdiction.

“The panna samiti members were given the task of collating information about the beneficiaries of central and state schemes. Then they reached out to them and enrolled at least one member from these families in the samiti, ensuring that the family would become a potential vote. There are about 70-80 lakh members in these samitis and when you add up the votes of their families and supporters, we get an edge over our opponents,” the second leader cited above said.

The focus was also on motivating people to vote and not opt for the none-of-the-above (NOTA) option, which was held responsible for crimping the winning margins and some losses in the previous election.

In 2017, data showed NOTA was overall fourth, with more votes than some regional parties such as the Nationalist Congress Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.

Out with the old

The process of ticket distribution was helmed by the senior leadership in Delhi. “While the detailed reports were drafted in the state, each name was sanctioned by the leaders in Delhi. Amit Shah, CR Paatil, and JP Nadda were involved in all stages but the final election strategy was drafted by Shah. He knows the minutiae of each seat,” said the first leader, requesting anonymity.

The party dropped about 41 lawmakers and a large number of senior leaders. Rupani, Nitin Patel, and Bhupendra Chudasama opted to not contest.

The party also strengthened its presence in areas where it performed poorly - Saurashtra, parts of South Gujarat with high tribal population, and rural areas. It also set about renewing its old but somewhat fraying ties with a community that can tip the scales with its political and numerical heft - the Patels.

In Saurashtra, which has 48 assembly seats across 11 districts, the party made efforts to blunt anti-incumbency by replacing existing candidates in a majority of the constituencies. The Congress won 30 of the 48 seats there in 2017. The BJP also made a concerted effort to woo the Patidar and the Koli communities by ensuring the implementation of welfare schemes.

Five-member teams comprising members from marginalised castes and other communities were formed for outreach. For the first time, the party increased the number of Brahmin candidates, from nine in 2017 to 14, and a team, which included the media convenor of Gujarat, Yagnesh Dave, and Rajya Sabha member Rambhai Mokariya, was set up to reach out to the community.

“The other factor that helped in the rural areas particularly was the water situation and the power supply vastly improved in the state which helped bring down the anger among the farming community. Government officials were instructed to ensure that mandis were purchasing produce at MSP,” said the second leader cited above.

Modi the face

With the Congress in disarray and the Aam Aadmi Party on its first outing in the state, the perception was that the BJP was headed for an easy victory. But the party pulled out all stops for canvassing blitzkrieg led from the front by its biggest leader, Modi, and comprising senior ministers and even chief ministers of other states. The party referred to this campaign as “carpet bombing”.

“With Modi as our leader and the face of our election campaign, we could withstand the fiercest attack from our opponents, because the people in the state have faith in him. They have seen his performance as chief minister, they see him as one of their own and they love him, he is the single biggest reason for the BJP’s win,” said the first leader cited above.

With the central leaders taking over, the narrative also shifted from hyper-local to larger national issues. The party skillfully diverted attention from inflation and concerns about rising prices, which was a common complaint. It spoke instead about India’s accomplishments on the world stage.

From rescue operations that brought students from war-torn Ukraine to vaccines that were offered to Western nations, the BJP’s poll narrative was successful in transcending the boundaries of local issues. The results were there for all to see on Thursday.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Smriti covers an intersection of politics and governance. Having spent over a decade in journalism, she combines old fashioned leg work with modern story telling tools.

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