Gujarat will vote in two phases for the assembly elections beginning Dec. 1. According to the schedule announced by the Election Commission of India on Thursday, the counting of votes will take place on Dec. 8.
To get a sense of what is in store in the electoral arena, let us rewind a bit.
After 24 years of incumbency, 2019 happened.
That was the year when the Bharatiya Janata Party won all seats on offer in Gujarat in the Lok Sabha elections with a gravity-defying vote share of 62%. The party was ahead of its rivals in all but nine assembly segments. What's more, in urban and semi-urban seats, the party's vote share was close to 70%.
That was not the only time the BJP has decimated its electoral rivals in the state. Only two years later, in 2021, to be precise, in the elections for urban local bodies, the party won 74% of all seats. And in municipal corporation polls, the party bagged an astonishing 84% of all seats on offer.
Now that the state is due for yet another round of assembly elections, will the outcome be any different this time? The answer from most of the keen observers of India's electoral politics will more likely be a resounding no.
In the 60 years of assembly elections, Gujarat has witnessed bipolar contests through and through. While the Congress dominated all elections between 1962 and 1990, the BJP has grown from strength to strength since 1995.
In fact, even as the BJP has been consistently increasing its vote share since 1995, the Congress has stayed flat at around 38%. Election Commission data show that the BJP won 121 out of 182 seats with a vote share of nearly 43% in the 1995 assembly polls. Although the party's vote share touched the 49% mark in the 2017 elections, the seat tally dropped below the psychologically important 100 mark.
The 2017 assembly elections proved to be the best for the Congress in 22 years. With a vote share in excess of 41%, the party won 77 assembly seats, which was a gain of 16 compared to the previous elections. That was the time when the troika of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor, and Jignesh Mevani used to add heft to Congress' fortunes.
However, the picture looks totally different now. Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakor have parted ways, and 15 of the elected Congress MLAs are no longer part of the grand old party. The party looks like a pale shadow of what it was five years ago.
BJP's Impregnable Urban Fortress
The BJP, on the other hand, enters the electoral arena from a position of strength. The party's dominance can be understood from the fact that it wins a majority of seats with a vote share of 50% or more. In 2002, the BJP won 84 seats with a vote share of 50% or more. And in the last two elections of 2012 and 2017, the BJP won nearly 70 seats each with a vote share of 50% or more. In other words, there are at least 70 odd seats where the BJP has a massive advantage over its rival. And that is just 22 seats shy of the majority mark in the state assembly!
What makes the BJP a formidable force in the state is the kind of dominance it enjoys over the urban electorate. In the last two assembly elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party's vote share was well over 58% in urban areas and above 51% in semi-urban seats.
The only weak link for the BJP has been its performance in rural areas. Last time around, the BJP trailed Congress' seat share of 67 in rural Gujarat. The vote share of the two parties was evenly matched at around 44% in the countryside.
The Two Unknowns Of The Elections
The two unknowns, however, this time are: the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party and the surging inflation in the post-pandemic period. If the AAP, which is positioning itself as a version of Hindutva politics, makes some dent in the BJP's urban fortress, there may be some sleepless nights for the perennial incumbent.
This is also going to be the first elections after the pandemic played itself out, leaving behind a trail of surging food price-induced inflation. The current spell has seemingly dented consumer sentiment more in rural areas. Will that hurt the incumbent on pitches that have always been difficult to negotiate?
The unknowns aside, the BJP's forever-prepared election machine is ready to take on yet another electoral challenge.
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