As the Gujarat assembly elections are nearing, which according to the announcement of the election commission, will be held before 18 Dec, BJP is using every possible tactic to remain in power in the state.
Though the party has ruled Gujarat for more than two decades, a win for this battle is in a little shaky grounds for BJP. Congress who has been striving hard to end its political exile in the state, seem to be successful in getting the attention and support of the people. Since Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi have actively started participating in the campaign and rallies, the party is gaining more confidence in the possibilities of winning the polls in Gujarat this time.
While on one hand, Congress is saying that the dream of Gujarat model given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a failure, BJP is adamant on using this very Gujarat model as its UBB.
Amidst all the tussle for power and the race of blaming each other, former BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Suresh Mehta, who has had a long-standing political career in the state said that the Gujarat Model favours only the rich. Suresh Mehta was the Chief MInister of Gujarat from 1995 to 1996. He was a member of the BJP and left the party in 2007.
In an interview, the former CM listed down the failures of successive Gujarat governments over the past decade and also questioned the priorities of the Gujarat Model, giving the government’s own data.
Regarding the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections, Mehta said that the growing anti-incumbency against the ruling BJP has made the political grounds a little favourable for the Congress. If the Congress wins the polls, it will be because of the negative votes against the BJP, not for any love for the party, he added. He further told that the traders were the most crucial vote bank for the BJP, but after the failure in the experiment of implementing GST, this vote bank is not happy with the ruling government and is willing to switch side, which may be a heavy cost to pay for the BJP.
The former Chief Minister also said that Congress has been losing till now, because of the internal differences within the party and BJP took advantage of this. He further told that if Congress comes to power in Gujarat, it will have to face many challenges as it has lost its experience in administration, after being out of rule for 22 years. He advised that if Congress wishes to reign in Gujarat peacefully and successfully, the very first thing it will have to do is unite the small camps within the party and end their differences. Another thing that the party needs to concentrate is on, converting the anti-incumbency factor into an electoral advantage, he added.
He also appreciated the efforts of Congress saying that the central leadership of Congress, unlike the other years in personally supervising the state unit and is also checking negative tendencies within it.
When questioned on what will be the dominant issues in the elections, he replied that BJP is left with no issue now and has hence jumped back to Vikas. He said that Amit Shah had in a statement in the parliament had said that “the BJP is going to the elections on three issues: Narmada (Sardar Sarovar project, the building of Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue), (Pradhan Mantri) Garib Kalyan Yojana and getting quotas for certain OBC groups.”
Though at the current situation, it seems like none of the agenda decided by the party worked for it, he said. Giving details he told, the Narmada issue did not get much attention from the people, while the Garib Kalyan Yojna was also cancelled by the government at the last moment thinking that this migh not work either and the announcement of the quotas for certain sections was also cancelled at the last moment by the ruling BJP.
He also asserted that the Gujarat Model agenda will not work for the bJP this time. He said that Gujarat model is nothing but a jugglery of words and has only favoured the capitalists. He further added that when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister in Gujarat, he had initiated the Vibrant Gujarat summit every alternate year promising to generate employment for one crore youth every year, but nothing of this sought happened.
The former Chief Minister also revealed that the BJP members in Gujarat are nervous