Will the AAP be a new force in the Gujarat assembly elections?

Will the AAP be a new force in the Gujarat assembly elections?
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Ahmedabad: The Aam Admi Party (AAP) took out a Tiranga Yatra in 30 districts (out of 33) of Gujarat between March 12 and March 15, two days after sweeping the Punjab assembly elections.

The message was clear the party has set its eyes on Gujarat assembly elections that are due to be held in December.

This is not the first time that the AAP is planning to contest the Gujarat elections. It had attempted in 2017, enrolling about 400,000 supporters in its membership drive. But the party decided not to contest the elections as it thought that the timing was not right. Few AAP leaders went ahead and contested in their individual capacity. They fared poorly, some even lost their security deposits.

This time around the party is not only buoyed by their performance in Punjab, where they toppled the ruling Congress in a landslide victory. Their performance in the local body elections is something they can talk about.

In January 2021, elections were held in six out of eight municipalities of Gujarat. The AAP won 27 seats in Surat municipal corporation, replacing the Congress as the main Opposition in the civic body. The AAP got a vote share of 28%.

Simultaneously the district panchayat elections were also held and the AAP won 40 seats. In September 2021, the AAP participated in the Gandhinagar civic body elections at the state’s capital but fared poorly, bagging only one seat. It however had an impressive vote share of 20%.

Earlier this week, the AAP appointed Sandeep Pathak, a PhD from Cambridge University and a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-Delhi), as the person-in-charge for Gujarat. An election strategist, Pathak is said to have played a key role in the party’s win in the Delhi assembly elections in 2020 and Punjab. He replaced Delhi MLA Gulab Singh Yadav who has been promoted as election in-charge for Gujarat.

Gujarat has been a bipolar state where the BJP and the Congress have been seen as the only real contenders for the past three decades now. Even historically, since the formation of Gujarat state on May 1, 1960, the political narrative of the state has been scripted by two main political parties, leaving very little scope for a third front. The home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, Gujarat has been a bastion for the BJP for about six terms now.

Whenever a new alternative has tried to emerge in Gujarat, it has ended up merging with the ruling party or the main Opposition.

For instance, in the 60s when the Congress was in power, the Swantantra Party was the main Opposition. Then when the Janata Party came into the picture, it merged with the Swantrantra Party, replacing it in the process. In the nineties, the BJP replaced Janata Party and became the main opposition party.

“We are not the third front. We are here with an aim to form the government. Yes, we did a rethink of our decision back in 2017 when the party organization was very small in Gujarat. This time make no mistake as we are here to replace all typical parties and their typical leaders who have for long ruined this state and the nation,” said Gopal Italia, president for the AAP Gujarat.

He said that all attempts made in the past two decades to open a third front in Gujarat were formed by disgruntled leaders who had parted from the BJP and hence did not have any major impact in the elections.

AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann are soon going to visit Gujarat for political campaigning.

The ‘Saaro Manas’ factor

In 2017, the BJP won 99 seats out of 182 while the Congress bagged 77, its best performance in the last two and half decades in Gujarat. Italia claimed that the Congress’ performance was due to the lack of a strong alternative in Gujarat. “The Congress got many of the anti-BJP votes back then. Now with the AAP in the picture, the outcome will be very different this year,” said Italia.

In January 2012, about 500,000 people of the powerful and influential Patidar community gathered at Khodaldham on the outskirts of Rajkot for a religious function. The event was seen as a launchpad for former Gujarat chief minister (CM) late Keshubhai Patel, who soon floated a new party, the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP), ahead of the 2012 assembly elections. The GPP won two seats then. Two years later, Patel had merged his GPP with the BJP before announcing his retirement from active politics.

The AAP hopes to make a difference as it is now seen as a national party and not a regional party anymore, having formed the government in Delhi and Punjab.

Ghanshyam Shah, retired professor of political science at JNU said that the situation is more like the mid-seventies during the Nav Nirman movement, the Janata Front was formed to find an honest face as the CM candidate.

“People in Gujarat, especially the middle class felt that ‘saaro manas’ (good person) should be made the CM. Today a similar situation has arisen when the notion of a saaro manas has again gained prominence. If AAP can make good use of this opportunity, they can do well,” according to Shah.

The Nav Nirman movement in 1974-75 where college students protested the hike in food mess bill soon became a statewide movement, forcing the then CM Chimanbhai Patel to resign.

Vote-cutter

In the Gandhinagar civic body elections, though the AAP gained 20% of the 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%.

A political expert who did not wish to be identified said similar to the Gandhinagar civic body elections, the AAP would cut the votes of the Congress that will ultimately increase the BJP’s seat tally.

“Every assembly has an average of about three lakh voters. At 65% voter turnout, about two lakh votes will be cast. The BJP’s vote share has risen by 1.5 percentage points to about 49% from 2012 to 2017 despite the fall in the number of seats. The Congress has a voter base of at least 25% that has been intact for a long time. In a three-cornered contest, the anti-BJP votes are likely to split between the AAP and the Congress, giving an edge to the BJP,” he said.

The AAP’s Italia says for a party that gets a 5% vote share or less can be termed as a vote-cutter and not a party that has in such a short span got more than 20% of the vote share.

“AAP has a long way to go in Gujarat politics before they can be called a strong contender. While it’s easy to talk and make claims the ground reality in Gujarat is very different. The people of Gujarat have always supported and blessed the BJP,” said Yamal Vyas, spokesperson for the BJP in Gujarat.

Gujarat Congress president Jagdish Thakor said AAP has trying to make inroads in Gujarat politics for a long time including in the 2017 state assembly elections and the outcome is known to all. Citing the examples of former CMs like Keshubhai Patel, Chimanbhai Patel and Shankersinh Vagehala, all of who tried to form a non-BJP, non-Congress alternative but did not succeed in the end.

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