State leaders take back seat, it’s Modi vs Rahul

Manas Dasgupta

The Assembly elections next month is being seen as a “semi-final” bout between PM Narendra Modi and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi before the final showdown in 2019.  With state leaders merely playing the second fiddle, neither the BJP nor the Congress has announced a CM-candidate. Nor are voters asking for the same. 

Gujarat is the home-state of both Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah. Hence, the poll outcome will  be crucial for their political future. But a hype has been created that any party that wins Gujarat will also win the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and rule the country. The BJP, and perhaps Modi himself, is partly responsible for the hype. He is the first PM to have devoted so much time to any Assembly elections, home state or not. Modi did not set foot in Gujarat for 18 months after he was made PM. But he made more than a dozen trips to Gujarat this year. These became weekly in the last two months.

Scheduled to address at least 50 election meetings, the PM would be spending 12 to 15 days in Gujarat in the next 36 days, if he addresses on an average four meetings a day. The BJP is also throwing into the ring a few Union Ministers and some better-known CMs besides Shah who has already made Ahmedabad his headquarters till the state elections are over. 

Rahul, who already has campaigned for nine days, three days each in Kutch-Saurashtra, central and south Gujarat, is expected to make another three-day trip to cover north Gujarat region beginning November 11. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh and former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram are also slated to address election meetings in the state.

The Congress hopes that young emerging leaders of the Other Backward Classes, Patidars and Dalits  spearheading its campaign would be able to garner a sizeable chunk of votes. While OBC leader Alpesh Thakore has already joined the Congress, Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti convener Hardik Patel and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani are playing truant. But in all probability, they will lend the party “outside” support. All three have declared they will work for the defeat of the BJP. 

It would be a tough ask for Hardik to unite the entire Patidar community behind the Congress. But the Congress can hope for solid backing from OBCs and Dalits. Mevani also enjoys considerable support of the Muslims because of his bitter opposition to self-styled cow vigilantes. Then there is young Pravin Ram, 27, who has opened a front against the BJP government on the issue of contractual jobs. 

After the loss of senior leader Shankarsinh Vaghela, who revolted against the party in July and is in political wilderness, the Alpesh, Jignesh and Hardik trio has come as a big catch for the Congress. A worried BJP has launched a massive fire-fighting operation to try to discredit the three young leaders.

The BJP came out with a tape, alleging that the reservation agitation was “funded” by Ahmed Patel, Sonia’s  political secretary. This failed to cut ice with voters. Then, the CM summoned a late-night media briefing, accusing Patel of links with “ISIS terrorists,” saying he was a former trustee of a hospital where one of the two alleged ISIS operatives, arrested by the Anti-Terrorist Squad from Surat, worked as a lab technician. He demanded Patel’s resignation from the Rajya Sabha. 

But details released by the police made it clear that  the MP had ceased to be a trustee of the private hospital since 2014 while the alleged terrorist was employed only six months ago and had resigned 24 days before he was arrested. 

It is too early to predict the outcome of the elections, but if the “Modi magic” works, nothing will stop the BJP from securing 130 plus seats. And if Modi’s charisma is on the wane, as claimed by the Congress, it will be the end of the “era of oblivion” for the Congress. 

Cong catch-line

The anti-BJP catch-line “Vikas gando thayo chhe” (Development has gone crazy) has turned out to be a creation of a frustrated “Patidar” youth of Ahmedabad, Sagar Savalia. It was picked up by the IT cell of the state Congress to ridicule the BJP’s “Gujarat model of development.” Now it has gone viral on the social media that the BJP has come up with a counter-tagline, “Hun chu vikas, hun chu Gujarat” (I am development, I am Gujarat).

The 20-year old Savalia, a civil engineering student, was a victim of a police lathi-charge at Hardik’s mega rally in Ahmedabad on August 25, 2015. He was “brutalised” by the police though he was not a member of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti then. A day before the second anniversary of the mega rally, Savalia posted on his facebook page a picture of a state transport bus resting on its broken axle with its wheels running backwards with the tagline, “Vikas gando thayo chhe” that became an instant hit.