Gujarat polls: Congress needs to improve its tally manifold in Phase 1

The Congress will have to improve its tally drastically in the seats that go to poll in the first phase of the Gujarat elections on December 9. Congress had fared poorly in these 89 seats in South Gujarat and Saurashtra in the last Assembly elections, managing to win only 16 seats.

Both these regions are politically significant and have been very volatile in the last three years. Of these, Saurashtra with 48 seats accounts for the largest number of seats in the 182 seat Gujarat Assembly, while South Gujarat sends 35 MLAs to the Assembly, Kachchh sends 6. These areas have a substantial Patidar or Patel presence and this is the community that is playing a pivotal role in these polls after having been a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vote bank for more than two decades.

The voters from this community stand divided this time with the youth rallying around Patel leader Hardik Patel who has stood up to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combination in Gujarat on the issue of reservation in government jobs and educational institutions.

None of the parties can afford to ignore the Patels in these regions and this is evident from the fact that the community candidates have bagged maximum tickets from both the BJP and the Congress. Till the last date of the filing of nominations on Tuesday, the BJP had fielded 31 Patels on the total 89 seats while the Congress gave tickets to the community candidates on 27 seats.

The BJP has then gone on to field 21 candidates from the Other Backward Castes (OBCs), 15 from upper castes, 14 tribal candidates and eight Dalits. The Congress on the other hand has given 27 tickets to the OBCs, nine upper castes, 14 to the tribal candidates and the remaining nine to Dalits and Muslims.

There are 24 seats where Patidars are pitted against rivals from their own community and the same is the case for the OBCs on 18 seats.

For this phase of the polls, the BJP has played relatively safe, repeating 39 candidates. It has denied tickets to 29 sitting MLAs and three ministers. It has also fielded two candidates who have come over from the the Congress. The 32 seats where the BJP has changed its candidates are the ones where its previous candidates had won on last two occasions or more and carried the baggage of anti-incumbency.

Looking desperately to improve its performance in this phase of the polls, the Congress has repeated only 16 candidates.

The last date for withdrawal of candidature is November 24.

Surat district with 16 Assembly constituencies has witnessed a deluge of candidatures with 410 persons throwing their hat in the ring. Of these, 48 candidates have filed their nominations for the Limbayat seat alone. It remains to be seen how many of them finally remain in the contest after the withdrawal.