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Gujarat municipal polls: Failure of Congress, not emergence of AAP, says BJP
However, there are concerns that the AAP could stoke issues that have been weak spots for the BJP, such as the Patidar movement that sought to bring the community under the ambit of the OBC quota
Riding high on the outcome of the Gujarat civic election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is confident that it has decimated the opposition and proved the accusations of not responding well to the challenges brought on by the pandemic false. The party seemed unfazed by the emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as an opposition and said the AAP’s gains should worry the Congress more.
Senior party leaders said the AAP’s win in 27 seats in the Surat Municipal Corporation cannot be read as the emergence of the party in the BJP stronghold, leave alone the entire state. “It is a wake-up call for the Congress. They have been decimated in these elections. As for the AAP, they only benefitted from the non-BJP votes,” said a party functionary.
While the BJP improved its tally from 389 seats that it won in 2015 to 489 seats, the Congress was reduced to 45 seats from its previously held 174 seats across the municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Surat, Rajkot and Vadodara.
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In Surat, the BJP won 93 seats, the AAP opened its account with 27 seats and the Congress won none in a 120-member civic body.
The Congress had won 36 seats in Surat during the 2015 elections.
A second party leader said the emergence of AAP in Surat, the hometown of the state unit president Chandrakant Patil, also a Lok Sabha MP from Navsari, does not indicate a dip in support for the BJP.
“The BJP’s hold in Surat continues; there is no dent in the party’s support base. The AAP has moved into the space vacated by the Congress. The leadership crisis in the Congress is forcing it out as the principal opposition,” the second leader said.
However, there are concerns that the AAP could stoke issues that have been weak spots for the BJP, such as the Patidar movement. Surat was the epicentre of the Patidar reservation movement that sought to bring the community under the ambit of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota.
“The BJP has learnt to turn anti-incumbency into pro-incumbency based on its administration, however there is always scope for the opposition to change the narrative based on conflict-ridden issues. For instance, in Punjab, the farm agitation has been hijacked by vested interests,” said the second functionary.
On Tuesday, AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj described the win as “breaching the citadel of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP”.
“People of Gujarat have voted for politics of work as they were fed up by the politics of BJP and Congress. The people of Gujarat wanted an alternative and AAP has emerged as the key alternative to the present parties. Now the upcoming assembly election will be only between Aam Aadmi Party and BJP,” said Arvind Kejriwal, the national convener of the AAP, in a press statement issued on Tuesday.
Hari Desai, a political commentator based in Gujarat, reiterated that the victory of AAP in Surat does not pose a challenge to the BJP. “The Aam Aadmi Party does not have the apparatus or the organisational network on the ground to emerge as a threat to the BJP. I feel they tend to benefit the BJP instead of being an opponent,” he said.
On the Congress’ performance, he said the party has failed to prop up its leadership and has been pulled down by infighting.
Former Gujarat state Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia said, “The election results of six municipalities are disheartening for Congress workers in Gujarat. We accept the people’s mandate but after every dark night there is a dawn. We will work hard to get the confidence of urban voters.”
