By P.S. Anantharaman, IANS
Ahmedabad : Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi faces the toughest battle of his career Tuesday as three key regions of the state go to voting in the first round of nationally-significant assembly elections.
The first round includes 87 constituencies from Saurashtra, Kutch and south Gujarat where 668 candidates are in the fray.
While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is contesting all 87 seats, the Congress has fielded 82 candidates with the remaining seats going to its allies.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a new entrant, is contesting 78 seats.
The second phase Sunday will cover the remaining 95 seats in north and central Gujarat as well as the tribal belt.
Ironically, the battle for the assembly has turned out to be a referendum on Modi. And more than the Congress party, the first phase is a make-or-break situation for Modi, who led the BJP to victory winning a record 127 seats in December 2002.
Modi faces a challenge in retaining the 56 seats – 38 in Saurashtra, 16 in south Gujarat and two in Kutch. The three regions have been hubs of dissidents within the BJP who are unhappy with Modi’s “autocratic” style of functioning.
All eyes are on Saurashtra as Modi’s predecessor Keshubhai Patel, who has sided with dissidents, is a tall figure there.
His Leuva Patel community, which had supported the BJP since the mid-1980s, is unhappy over the treatment the BJP meted out to the stalwart by replacing him with Modi in October 2001.
Patel’s tirade against Modi has been received well in Saurashtra, and a number of BJP dissidents contesting the polls as Congress candidates are expected to benefit.
Moreover, farmers in this drought-prone region are unhappy with Modi, saying his government has not delivered on promises of reliable power supply, fertilizer supply and remunerative prices for their produce.
Even the farmers’ organisation affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP, is dissatisfied.
“Farmers know that their problems are a legacy that continues. No political party whether Congress or BJP has been able to tackle their woes. It is also a fact that no government can meet their demands in entirety,” Maganbhai Patel, general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, told IANS.
Considering the importance of the caste card in Saurashtra, the Congress has fielded 40 Patel candidates, twice the number it nominated in 2002.
Modi also faces a tough fight for the 16 seats in south Gujarat where the BJP tally could come down because of the rebels.
Moreover, residents of Surat, the region’s largest city, are angry over what they perceive as the failure of the state government to prevent the floods of 2006 that brought the industrial city to a standstill for nearly a week.
Another factor weighing against Modi is the stance of Surat’s diamond industry, which is split into the Modi and anti-Modi camps.
Surat is home to former union minister Kashmiram Rana, who has not campaigned for Modi, as well as Dhirubhai Gajera, the most vocal BJP dissident legislator now contesting on a Congress ticket.
In Kutch district along the border with Pakistan, another former BJP chief minister, Suresh Mehta, finally quit the party in the weekend, saying Modi was out to finish the organisation.
His campaigning for Congress candidates is bound to hurt the BJP.
The Congress too will have to make the most of opportunities offered in the first phase if it wants to prevent the BJP from coming to power for a third consecutive time. The second phase of polls will be largely in urban areas where Modi is seen as popular.
The election campaign for the first phase, which ended Sunday evening, was unusually acrimonious, with Modi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi trading charges – and receiving notice from the Election Commission after complaints that they had violated the code of conduct.
Addressing a rally in Saurashtra Dec 2, Gandhi said “merchants of death” were at large in Gujarat. She was referring to the alleged communal bias of the Modi government and the way it handled the 2002 violence – an issue largely seen as the reason behind the unprecedented victory of Modi’s BJP later that year.
In reply that produced fireworks, Modi virtually justified the extra-judicial killing of a Muslim branded as terrorist.
While Modi replied to the poll panel notice saying he was misquoted in some media reports, he demanded action against Gandhi.
Some key leaders in the fray in the first phase are Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala and Urban Development Minister I.K. Jadeja as well as Arjun Modhvadia, the leader of the opposition in the outgoing assembly.