Gujarat Election Series 2022 Part I By Japan K Pathak ; It’s Easier For BJP To Cross Half Mark Than Rivals

Japan K Pathak, Gandhinagar : If you ask who is going to enjoy the upper hand in the upcoming State assembly election of Gujarat and where is the wind blowing, most people would reply that BJP is going to win Gujarat once again this time. But what is the foundation of such an impression? And what are related footprints? The answer is in the strength, that BJP has displayed in the results in the past few years. In this Gujarat Election Series, we will understand the entire footprint. In this first part of the series, watch this map first.

Gujarat had a new delimitation of assembly seats in the year 2009. The map here shows the assembly seat-wise picture of five elections that happened after the new delimitation was in effect. It covers the Lok Sabha elections of the years 2009, 2014, and 2019 and the assembly elections of the year 2012 and 2017.

So you would see that in the last five elections, 66 fixed assembly segments gave more votes to BJP candidates than others. For example, Ahmedabad’s Ellisbridge is one of such 66 assembly seats that has been favoring BJP candidates through the last five polls. So there are 66 seats that have been electing BJP candidates in the last five polls. There are 80 assembly seats that are continuously favoring BJP candidates in the last four elections. There are 98 assembly seats that have been favoring BJP candidates in the last three elections.

Now in contrast, if we look at the picture of the Congress party, then there have been only four assembly seats where the voters have always favored Congress candidates in the last five elections. These assembly areas are – Danilimda, Dahod, Mandvi, and Vyara. There are only two assembly seats namely Jamalpur Khadia and Nizar that favored Congress candidates through last all three elections.

Gujarat has a total of 182 assembly seats. The halfway mark is 91. A party needs 92 seats to get elected to power. By going through the figures above, you would have an idea that how easy it is for BJP to reach the halfway mark, compared to Congress. Because of a higher number of loyal assembly segments, it is easier for BJP to cross the halfway mark, compared to its rivals.

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If we try to understand the pattern of the seats that give continuous favors to Congress, then Danilimda and Jamalpur Khadia seats have the major presence of Muslim candidates. The Congress may face a tough situation in these seats only if Owaisi or AAP split the anti-BJP votes in sufficient numbers. The other seats that regularly favor Congress, namely Dahod, Mandvi, Vyara, and Nizar are majorly tribal-populated seats, that also have a significant presence of converted Christians.

You would also be able to see nine red spots on this map. They show the assembly segments of Gujarat that favored Congress in the year 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Out of a total of 182 assembly seats in Gujarat, these were the only 9 assembly seat areas that favored Congress over BJP.

Among these 9 seats, Kodinar was the only seat in the entire Saurashtra and Kutch region. Congress was ahead of BJP in Kodinar by around 1500 votes. In entire North Gujarat, Vadgam was the only assembly seat where Congress was ahead of BJP. Ahmedabad’s Jamalpur Khadia and Danilimda assembly seats and tribal belts Zalod, Dahod, Mandvi, Vyara, and Nizar were other seats where Congress was ahead of BJP. Of these seats, Jamalpur Khadia, Danilimda, and Vadgam have a major presence of Muslim voters. Barring Kodinar, the other seats have a major presence of tribal voters including those affected by religious conversion activities by Churches.

In fact, if you noticed, the Gujarat BJP chief CR Patil and Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel paid multiple visits to Vadgam in the last few months. The Prime Minister addressed a rally in Dahod. The Prime Minister addressed at least three public meetings in tribal seats in Southern Gujarat. Congress party’s Zalod legislator Bhavesh Katara is not favoring Congress party anymore. He is believed in support of the BJP nowadays. Congress has dropped him and fielded other candidates from Zalod. Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Dahod. However, Rahul had skipped a scheduled rally in tribal areas of South Gujarat.

It is true, that the voters cast votes differently in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections. The turnout, the candidates, and the agendas tend to be different in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections. But the map above at least gives by-and-large an estimate that which are BJP’s support areas and which are Congress’s.

So if we go through the performance of parties in the last five elections (assembly and Lok Sabha) that offer us the assembly-wise picture (local polls would not give us an exact assembly segment-wise picture), we can find that BJP is enjoying more strength and is closer to victory. Now, this is not a permanent and unchangeable situation. For example, the Tharad seat always favored BJP candidates through all these five elections, but in the year 2019, then Tharad BJP MLA Parbatbhai Patel was elected to Lok Sabha, and to retain his Lok Sabha seat he resigned. This caused a by-poll on the Tharad assembly seat and it was won by a Congress candidate. So loyalty can slip away also. But if you observe the overall and long-term scenario, then the number of constantly loyal areas for BJP is very large. The party needs to win other required seats through a dogfight. On the other hand, Congress has far lesser assembly seats where it wins constantly. So Congress requires to win a dogfight for many more seats. We will go through more data in an upcoming episode of this Gujarat Election Series.

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