BJP president JP Nadda, who is on a state visit, asked party workers in a meeting to “maximize” the party’s victory scale and address the challenges in every ward.
Apart from rural seats, where the BJP faced a significant dent in 2017, the focus has been particularly on the 57 seats the party has found most challenging to win in the past five decades.
A senior party functionary said, “There is always a section in Gujarat that did not vote for the BJP especially in the assembly elections and this time we want to start from there as the focus is on increasing vote share and margins. Is.
In 2017, BJP won 35 out of 37 seats where the margin of victory was more than 40,000 votes, but out of 63 seats it won by a margin of less than 10,000 votes, it won only 26 seats, while the opposition Congress won 35. But had won.
The party is now planning to launch a ‘Vistarak Scheme’ in the next 15 days, under which senior functionaries, mostly with RSS background, will be given the responsibility of a district each to assess the situation in each ward and mandal. . Report to party workers, and party leaders.
Another BJP functionary said, “Yesterday Naddaji also addressed hundreds of party workers from different wards.” “This was the second booster dose of inspiration from the party for the grassroot workers, after the Prime Minister’s visit to the party office here and the roadshow after the UP victory.”
Party workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the BJP’s position was much better than in 2017, but the growing presence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and a cautious Congress are challenges it is eyeing.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are scheduled to visit the state every month from now on. Shah is expected to remain in the state till the end of this month.
At least four Union ministers, including Bhupendra Yadav, Mansukh Mandaviya and Anurag Thakur, have visited Gujarat in the last two weeks to assess the situation on the ground.
In his three-day visit, Nadda met party core committee and election committee members in the state and worked with state party leaders, tentative travel plans of top state leaders and several inauguration programs for infrastructure projects.
The focus is on strengthening the party’s organization on 76 of the 141 rural and “Rurban” seats the Congress won in 2017.
The Congress did well in Saurashtra, but failed to impress voters in north and central Gujarat. In 30 seats, almost one in every six seats, the margin of victory was less than against NOTA.
A party functionary said, “BJP won 34 out of 38 urban seats and we are making sure it wins there too.”
Political analyst Narendra Pathak said the BJP’s vote share was 49.1% in 2017 as against the Congress’s 42.1%. While both parties improved their vote share, a markedly higher gain helped the Congress reduce the disparity in terms of seats it won by 54 in the previous elections. Pathak said, “…that is why the BJP is intent on increasing both the vote share and the margin of victory for a comfortable victory.”
Ghanshyam Shah, an eminent political writer from Gujarat, said in the nineties that the BJP’s victory of 122 out of 182 seats, winning 42% of the vote in the 1995 assembly elections, was not because of a “temporary wave”, but because the party was in the 1960s. It had built its support structure brick by brick by the decade. Became active in the state soon after the birth of the Jana Sangh in 1951, Saurashtra’s RSS leaders, mainly Brahmins and Rajputs, were the party’s main motivators, he said.
Pathak said the BJP did not face challenges like split in Patidar and OBC votes in 2017. “The BJP has followed the electoral math of the Congress and gradually built its base among the OBC, SC and ST communities,” he said.
“Even in 2017, though the Krishi Patidar vote helped the Congress gain a foothold in the Kutch-Saurashtra region by winning 30 out of 54 seats, the party could not pick up momentum in other regions, and this time it is looking even tougher. Opposition,” said Pathak. “That said, the state is symbolically most important in the country as the PM is from the state and every election, irrespective of all the underlying factors, is seen as a verdict on the Gujarat model and its sustainability.”
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