When Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel appealed to the people last week to “gift all nine Vidhan Sabha and one Lok Sabha seats”, that went to by-elections on September 13, as a birthday gift to the Prime Minister, she would have scarcely known that Narendra Modi would not, perhaps, like it.
Modi, who will celebrate his 65th birthday on Wednesday, is arriving in Gujarat for the first time after taking oath as PM on May 26. The BJP had made unprecedented preparations to accord a red-carpet welcome to Modi who, accompanied by BJP President Amit Shah, was scheduled to attend a reception on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
However, by-election results, announced on Tuesday, clearly disheartened many BJP leaders and workers. For, even an unprepared Congress was able to wrest three Assembly seats from the BJP—Khambalia, Mangrol and Deesa—while the ruling BJP managed to retain six seats. A loss of a third of Assembly seats that went to by-lections was, indeed, a shocker for a party that has, for long, viewed Gujarat as its “laboratory”.
However, the BJP managed to win both the Vadodara Lok Sabha and Maninagar Vidhan Sabha seats, vacated by Modi in May. But the margins were lower from what was seen in the Lok Sabha elections. Against the record margin of over 5.7-lakh vote victory registered by Modi from Vadodara constituency, the BJP candidate Ranjanben Bhatt could manage margin of 3.29 lakh votes over Congress candidate Narendra Rawat in the by-polls.
Voter turnout remained a concern in the by-polls across the state, where only 50.95 per cent of the voters turned out against 63.33 per cent in General Elections 2014. Voter turnout in Vadodara was at 45.39 per cent against 70.57 per cent registered in Lok Sabha polls in May.
In Maninagar, from where Modi had won thrice with thumping majority, voting was lukewarm at about 36 per cent. This was reflected in the reduction in winning margin for the BJP candidate from Maninagar Suresh Patel, who won with a margin of 49,652 votes in the by-polls against Modi’s 86,373-vote victory in 2012.
Amid reduced voter turnout, what came as a shocker for the state BJP was a loss on three assembly seats, which they had won with handsome margins in assembly elections in 2012.
Adding to the concern was the winning margin with which the Congress candidates made their way to victory. At Deesa, where the BJP candidate had got 18,000-vote victory in 2012 assembly polls, in the by-polls Congress candidate won with a margin of 10,394 votes. The winning margin for Congress was as low as 1208 votes on Khambhalia seat in Dev Bhumi Dwarka district. Giving a strong dent to the BJP in Saurashtra, Congress also snatched away Mangrol seat in Junagadh district with a winning margin of 22,682 votes.