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2024 election: BJP’s grip remains over Gujarat bastion
BJP dominates Gujarat winning 25 out of 26 Lok Sabha seats, falling short of a clean sweep. Congress wins Banaskantha. BJP retains strongholds.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday continued its electoral dominance in Gujarat, winning 25 out of the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the western state, which is home to both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. However, the party’s aim for a third successive clean sweep in the general elections took a hit after Congress’s Geniben Nagarji Thakor emerged victorious in the Banaskantha parliamentary constituency.
Gujarat delivered the BJP its first victory in these elections much before the state went to polls on May 7, after party candidate Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed in Surat. It came after all other eight contestants withdrew their nominations on April 24.
Having set an ambitious target of winning all the 26 seats in the state with a margin of over 500,000 votes, the BJP fielded three central ministers — Shah from Gandhinagar, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbander, and minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying Parshottam Rupala from Rajkot.
The BJP managed to achieve the over 500,000 votes winning margin target on four seats, including in Gandhinagar where Shah defeated Sonal Patel of the Congress by 744,716 votes by polling 1,010,972 votes, and in Navsari, where state BJP chief CR Patil won by 773,551 votes against Naishad Desai of the Congress. Patil, who polled 1,031,035 votes, secured a fourth straight term in the Lok Sabha.
BJP candidates Hemang Joshi and Rajpalsinh Mahendrasinh Jadav also managed to achieve the over 500,000 votes victory margin target in Vadodara and Panchmahal constituencies, respectively.
“We had won 26 out of 26 seats in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and this time too we aimed to win all. We came close, but regret not securing the Banaskantha seat,” Patil told reporters.
The BJP’s poll campaign in Gujarat had focused heavily on PM Modi’s appeal, development works, inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and a strong nationalist narrative.
The party maintained its stronghold in the Saurashtra-Kutch region, winning comfortably in all eight constituencies despite protests from the Rajputs over an alleged controversial remark against the community by Union minister Rupala in March this year. The results highlighted that the controversy did not have much impact on the party’s electoral prospects, with Rupala winning the Rajkot seat with a margin of 484,260 votes against Paresh Dhanani of the Congress.
For the Opposition Congress, the solitary win in Banaskantha broke a decade-long draught in Gujarat. Geniben Thakor, a sitting Congress legislator, defeated her nearest rival Rekhaben Chaudhary of the BJP by 30,406 votes. The 48-year-old Congress leader, who crowd-financed her campaign, rose to prominence during the 2017 assembly polls, when she clinched victory over Banas Dairy chairman and BJP stalwart Shankar Chaudhary in Vav constituency. She retained the seat in 2022 despite her party’s dismal performance in the state, where it secured only 17 of 182 seats.
Political experts attributed the Congress leader’s performance to her strong grassroots connect and the support she garnered from the influential Thakor community, which has a substantial presence in the constituency.
In the Scheduled Tribe (ST)-reserved Bharuch seat, BJP’s sitting lawmaker and former Union minister Mansukh Vasava defeated Chaitar Vasava of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had stitched a pre-poll alliance with the its INDIA bloc partner Congress in the state and contested two of the 26 seats. Vasava, who won with a margin of 85,696 votes, has been winning the seat since 1998. The seat was held earlier by Congress veteran late Ahmed Patel from 1977 to 1989. In Bhavnagar, AAP’s Umesh Makwana lost to Nimuben Bhambhaniya of the BJP by 455,289 votes.
Meanwhile, the BJP also won all five assembly bypolls in Gujarat on Tuesday, increasing its tally in the 182-member state assembly to 161.
