Ahmedabad: The big question that many asked during campaigning for the local body elections in Gujarat was this: What will be the impact of the Patel reservation agitation on the BJP’s performance in the elections?
But there were issues too. Issues that weren’t discussed in election rallies. Issues that affected the rural electorate more than the Patel reservation stir. And these issues impacted the election results too.
An interesting outcome of the local body elections is this – the BJP managed to hold on to power in the six urban centres of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar. But the party lost, and quite miserably, in the district panchayat elections.
The Congress literally stormed the district panchayat elections, winning over 20 of the 31 district panchayats. Before the elections, the BJP held 30 of the 31 district panchayats.
What then went wrong for the BJP in rural Gujarat?
More than the Patidar effect, what perhaps hit the BJP hard is downward spiralling prices of cotton and non availability of irrigation water. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Gujarat chief minister, he wanted cotton Minimum Support Price (MSP) to be fixed at Rs 1500 per 20 kg.
Today, Gujarat’s farmers are selling their cotton for Rs 820 per 20 kg, much lower than the Rs 900 MSP that the Gujarat government has asked the central government for.
But the Patidar effect has played a role too. The Congress might not have won any of the six municipal corporations, but it has made huge gains in the cities.
In Rajkot for instance, it would have won the Rajkot Municipal Corporation if it had won three seats more. If not all, a sizeable chunk of Patels are clearly angry with the BJP and have voted against it in both the cities as well as rural areas.
For the Congress, any result would have been a bonus. It had hit rock bottom in the municipal corporations, municipalities and district panchayats. Having control over 20 district panchayats is nothing short of phenomenal as far as the Congress is concerned. More so, the Congress is now a far more strong opposition in the city corporations as well.
So while the BJP celebrates its clean sweep of the urban civic bodies and Congress workers burst fireworks for sweeping the rural civic bodies, the stage has been set for a rather intriguing assembly election scheduled in the second half of 2017.
At least it now promises to be a keen fight.
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