Gujarat Congress likely to face tough journey ahead

|HT|

The Congress party in Gujarat, which in 2017 gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) one of its toughest election fights in more than two and half decades of its rule in the state, seems missing in action. This is at a time when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying to make inroads in Gujarat by projecting itself as an alternative. While some political observers and experts are of the view that the party may face a terminal decline here on, Congress leaders say it’s too early to write off the party that got about 38% vote share in the 2017 elections, and that Gujarat Congress will bounce back.

During his last visit to Ahmedabad recently, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal claimed Congress was not visible on the ground and it existed merely on paper.

Has the party that got more than a third of the votes in the last assembly elections lost the plot even before the electioneering has started?

Dalit leader and Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani, who recently joined Gujarat Congress Pradesh Committee as its working president, is more optimistic about his party’s chances. “What it is doing is unprecedented given the way fascist forces have joined hands with corporates to wipe out any opposition in the state. There is also media propaganda to project Congress in a certain light,” Mevani said in an interaction.

National leaders of the BJP and AAP have already started frequenting the state that goes to the polls to elect a new assembly later this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Gujarat six times in two months and Delhi chief minister Kejriwal went to Gujarat five times in the same period.

Congress leaders are yet to make their presence felt more than four months after Rahul Gandhi visited Dwarka and discussed the roadmap for the upcoming Gujarat elections. Gandhi last visited Gujarat on May 10, when he addressed the Adivasi Satyagraha Rally in the tribal dominated Dahod town. Gujarat is set to go to elections in December and the BJP has been in a campaign mode for more than a year ago, with Gujarat chief C R Paatil working on strategies and implementing them.

The Congress has lost at least 14 MLAs in the past two years, who have crossed over to the BJP. The party’s strength in the state legislative assembly has fallen from 77 to about 64 MLAs. The BJP, which won 99 seats in 2017, has seen its numbers grow to 111 MLAs. The assembly has 182 members.

In tribal areas, a stronghold of the BJP, Congress is almost neck to neck with 15 out of 27 seats reserved for scheduled tribes after accounting for defections. “People should not think that the Congress is dead in Gujarat. The kind of situation the country is undergoing today, the masses can at any point of time infuse a new lease of life into the party,” said Chhotu Vasava, a tribal leader and MLA from Jhagadia constituency. “If the Congress is not good as the BJP leaders claim, how do their MLAs who join BJP turn good overnight?”

Kejriwal during one of his recent visits to Gujarat had announced that the AAP in Gujarat had decided to enter into alliance with Vasava led Bharatiya Tribal Party.

About a week after Gandhi’s last visit to Gujarat, Patidar leader Hardik Patel left the Congress and joined the BJP. The Congress in Gujarat had weaved an alliance of three youth leaders, including Patel, Mevani and OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, to take on the BJP in 2017. Thakor left Congress and joined the BJP in 2019. Gujarat Congress was looking at projecting a chief ministerial face for the party ahead of the December elections. For this, some of the Gujarat Congress leaders were keen on projecting Naresh Patel, chairman of Khodaldham Temple Trust, as their leader. Last month, Patel, however, announced that he will not be contesting the elections, heeding the advice of community leaders.

“Congress is on a terminal decline in Gujarat. It has reached a stage from where it not be able to check its disappearance. They need a miracle to save themselves,” said Amit Dholakia, head of the department for political science, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

“If not, then in the next five to seven years, they will face a similar fate that the CPM faced in West Bengal, a state where it ruled with 40% vote share for three decades,” Dholakia said. “The difference here is that Congress has been in opposition for a similar time period.” While the BJP took the opposition space in West Bengal by replacing the CPM, in Gujarat the AAP is eyeing that space as the main opposition party, he said.

The advantages Congress had in 2017 to build up its position and fight against the mighty BJP, it is not in a position to recover that this time, especially with five months left for the elections, according to Dholakia.

The AAP has started social media campaigns, raising issues like electricity and education, similar to what the Congress had done in 2017, when it raised issues of unemployment and demonetization.

The party, however, lacks organizational strength in Gujarat, which is why it will be a challenge to replace Congress as an opposition in the near future, said Dholakia. The new entrant AAP in Gujarat elections may end up cutting into Congress votes that could actually end up increasing the seat tally of the BJP. A similar situation took place at the Gandhinagar civic body election, where Congress was in power. In the October 2021 elections, although the AAP gained 20% vote share, it bagged only one seat.

The Congress’ vote share, which was at 46.93% in 2016, fell by 18.96 percentage points to 27.97%. The BJP won 41 out of 44 seats as its vote share remained the same at about 45% compared to 2016. The Congress won two seats and the AAP won one.

“Congress has lost connection with the people of Gujarat,” said Yamal Vyas, a Gujarat BJP spokesperson. “Their poor performance in the last local and civic body elections show that they have lost ground in Gujarat.” Gujarat is the classic case where anti-incumbency is not only against the ruling BJP government but also against the Congress that has been the main opposition party for at least 27 years and has not done enough to come to power and solve the problems of the people of the state, said Puneet Juneja, state secretary for the AAP in Gujarat.

Gujarat Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi disagreed with the various assessments that say his party is in terminal decline. The Congress is working on a strategy that will bring in a massive change in how its presence is felt in Gujarat, which will be soon visible on the ground, Doshi said.

After Gandhi’s visit to Dahod in May when the Adivasi Satyagrah was launched, the party has started many initiatives in as many as 40 seats, including 13 non-STs seats where a large number of tribals are present. “The way AAP leaders are hitting out at the Congress, it seems they are here to help the BJP rather than defeat them,” he said. “Presently, we are working at strengthening the organization at the booth level, something that we lacked in the earlier election.”

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)