A sizzling summer and a boiling political cauldron seem all set to heat up the Gujarat polls well before time as Narendra Modi and Amit Shah move to defend their home turf and the Opposition readies to challenge them.
There is lots going on beneath the surface as the chessboard is being setfor the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh state assembly elections due later this year. For now, a triangular battle is in the offing as the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) throws its hat into the ring to wrestle space for itself in a traditionally BJP-Congress confrontational format.
Gujarat acquires added importance for Prime Minister Modi when he seeks a third term for himself and his party at the Centre in the 2024 national elections. One can almost visualise him making a ‘son of the soil’ pitch when push comes to shove in the ensuing polls in the state.
However, it was inspite of this and assorted campaign theatrics that the Congress administered a fright to the BJP in the 2017 Assembly polls, bagging 77 seats and bringing the ruling party to below 100 in a House of 182. In the period thereafter, itused the by-now familiar carrot-stick (resign-reelect) policy to wean away legislators and bring it down to 64 while boosting its own numbers to 111.
Modi’s entire political persona is based on aggression and confrontation and the BJP, a far cry from the party of the Atal- Advani era, has now begun to reflect the same. Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP also strategises to use the politics of protests (aggression) to make forays into opponents’ territories. This has now led to a scenario where Modi’s party in power is at the moment faced with the very same strategy that he himself used to claw into and consolidate his hold. This time the similar challenge is from AAP and Congress but both working independently and sometime at cross-purposes.
Kejriwal’s first notable success in Gujarat was when his party managed to bag 27 seats in the Surat Municipal Corporation elections in February last year sending its hopes of making inroads in the statesoaring. It subsequently pitched inaggressively into the Municipal Corporation elections in the state capital of Gandhinagar in October last year with disastrous results for the opposition.
