By Ashish Mehta and Rajeev Khanna, IANS
Ahmedabad/New Delhi : Narendra Modi, Hindutva’s poster boy and Gujarat chief minister, Sunday led a divided Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a spectacular victory in Gujarat, crushing the Congress and catapulting himself firmly on the national political stage.
In a performance that stunned friends and foes alike, Modi’s BJP – he had selected most candidates – won 117 seats in the 182-member assembly, marginally less than the 127 it got in 2002 at the height of communal polarisation, to return the party to power for a fourth successive term, and third for Modi himself.
As tens of thousands celebrated wildly across Gujarat and cheered him when he reached the party office here, Modi, 57, sought to paper cracks in the BJP ranks by crediting the win to the “sweat and toil” of its activists and national leaders, fully knowing that he was the principal architect of the landslide win.
BJP’s euphoric prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani, for years a staunch supporter of Modi, said his party’s victory signalled its “comeback as the frontrunner in the next parliamentary elections”.
The Congress, which was hoping to end Modi’s six-year reign that began in October 2001, suffered a humiliating defeat despite the overt and covert backing of the BJP dissidents including former chief minister Keshubhai Patel.
The Congress won 59 seats – only eight more than what it had in the outgoing assembly.
The Nationalist Congress Party, a Congress ally, won three seats, the Janata Dal-United, a BJP ally but which did not associate Modi in its campaign, bagged one seat while two seats went to independents. The Bahujan Samaj Party of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati failed to make a mark, proving Gujarat was essentially a Congress-BJP battleground.
Political analyst G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, who toured Gujarat extensively during the election, told IANS: “It is primarily a vote for Modi and his leadership, a thumbs up for him, for what he has done in the last five years. Most voters see him as a thoroughly honest and trustworthy person.”
Rao underlined that the triumph was a must for Modi’s political existence.
“He needed to win to silence his critics, to prove that he governs not by creating divisions but that he can seriously govern. He has left an indelible mark in this victory.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had campaigned actively in Gujarat for the Congress along with party president Sonia Gandhi, telephoned Modi and congratulated him on the win, the BJP’s greatest moment of glory after its rout in the 2004 parliamentary election. Modi called the verdict a “positive vote”.
A dejected Congress grudgingly admitted that Modi’s showing was a “remarkable achievement”. “We are deeply disappointed by the result,” Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal and Congress leader said here.
“We will have to analyse (what went wrong). (Our) confidence was misplaced. While we have made no substantial gains, Modi has held on to its lead, almost held on to its lead, which is a remarkable achievement,” the minister said.
In contrast to widespread predictions, the challenge of the BJP dissidents failed to derail Modi in the vast region of Saurashtra. Barring Central Gujarat, where it suffered reverses, the BJP managed to sweep all other areas.
Pitted against Modi were just not the Congress and BJP dissidents but also a miffed Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and sections of Hindu monks who had backed the BJP in 2002. Knowing that Modi had become a larger than life figure, even the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentors of the right-wing Hindu nationalist fraternity, seemed to be wary of him.
Haren Pathak, a minister in the previous BJP-led government of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told reporters: “Modi is our chief minister. He is our leader. He is our master hero.” BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy used cricket language to say: “BJP has won the match, and Modi is the Man of the Match.”
Within three hours after the start of vote counting at 8 a.m., celebrations broke out outside BJP offices all over Gujarat and also in New Delhi.
Armed with Modi masks and Modi T-shirts and hailing Modi without stop, tens of thousands burst firecrackers, danced wildly to drum beats, distributed and consumed sweets. Victorious BJP candidates were carried on the shoulders of supporters, drowned in garlands. Some men danced holding their children on their shoulders.
Analyst Rao said that although the result would have a national impact, with Railway Minister Lalu Prasad already attacking the Congress for its “mistakes”, Modi was unlikely to desert Gujarat for now.
“Modi is going to be around in politics for a long time to come,” he said. “Having announced Advani as the prime ministerial candidate, the BJP has willy-nilly stopped Modi in his tracks. But he is a patient man. He is in no hurry.”
Rao explained what went wrong with the Congress.
“In Gujarat, the Congress has to forget the past and fight for the future. In this election they had a very negative approach. They were trying to remind people about the gory past (the 2002 anti-Muslim violence that killed over a thousand people). And failed. They fell into the trap of the ultra secularists. There was also the pressure of the media. All this undid them.”