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Gujarat: both BJP, Congress optimistic

NEW DELHI: Neither the Bharatiya Janata Party nor the Congress is as yet willing to concede defeat in the Gujarat elections that ended on Sunday. While the Congress estimates that they would get 103 seats, including four of the Nationalist Congress Party, the BJP is confident of a “comfortable majority of anything from 100 seats upwards [in an Assembly of 182].”

A senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said that given the large voter turnout at polling stations in cities such as Ahmedabad and Vadodara and the “enthusiastic” response to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies he would not like to put a cap on the number of seats the party may win. Anything upwards of 100, and it could surpass the 127-seat win in 2002, said the leader who was in the thick of the party’s election strategy.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi pointed out that exit and opinion polls had gone “100 per cent wrong repeatedly … in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, to name two instances.” The Congress, he said, was “headed for a well-deserved, clean and unequivocal victory.”

If in 2002 the vote for the BJP came on the back of communal riots and divisive politics, this time the party hopes to secure a “positive mandate” for Mr. Modi on the basis of his performance in the last five years.

However, the optimistic mood in the party headquarters is not evenly spread. Another leader said the loss of the Khargone Lok Sabha seat in adjoining Madhya Pradesh was worrying.

The polling there took place around the same time as in Gujarat and the constituency is part of the tribal belt that includes regions in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

“We have lost all Assembly segments in Khargone. As opposed to conjectures, we have a result here. If the tribal belt in Gujarat has voted like the tribals have in Khargone, the BJP could be in trouble,” he said.

The Congress has also based its optimistic assessment on good performance in the tribal belt and in Central Gujarat. Mr. Singhvi said: “In Central Gujarat the Congress had won only seven of 62 seats in 2002. This time we hope to win 30 plus.”

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad was willing to speak “on record.” He said there was no serious challenge to Mr. Modi’s leadership and no serious opposition on any issues.

He claimed that if voters came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise – the 63 per cent to 65 per cent turnout in the second phase was higher than the turnout in 2002 – it was only because Mr. Modi’s persuasive power got them out.

Normally after 12 years in government – the BJP has been in power that long except for a brief Shankarsinh Waghela interlude – the voters would be apathetic, Mr. Prasad said.

His view was that Gujaratis came out in large numbers to vote for Mr. Modi and to vote against all those who had hurt their sentiments by making the 2002 riots the centrepiece of their anti-BJP stance at the political level, nationally and internationally.

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