JOIN USGujarat elections: A tale of two constituencies
After the BJP’s high-pitched campaign in Gujarat, there are two constituencies where the party’s stakes are visibly high. Unjha in Vadnagar and Mansa in Gandhinagar are linked to the tallest leaders. Vadnagar is home to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Mansa is where Amit Shah spent the formative years of his life.
And yet, the party lost both seats in 2017 to Congress. Mansa has been with Congress for the past three terms. Unjha, on the other hand, went to the Congress and was eventually wrested by the BJP in 2019 after the Congress MLA Asha Patel moved to BJP and bagged the seat in the ensuing bypoll.
At Unjha’s Jeera Mandi, the support for the BJP is vocal. “This time the party has fielded a man who is known for his social work,” says a trader.
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At the BJP office, Hansukh K Patel says the party is fighting for 181 seats. “Because Unjha is already won,” he says. This term, the party has given the ticket to an RSS worker, Kirit Kumar Keshavlal, who Patel says has worked in the fields of education, environment and social service.
“He’s the founder of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in Gujarat Pradesh, and he has run the Kanya Kirori Mandal for 25 years, educating over 3,000 girl students,” Patel says, adding that with an engineering degree, he’s also one of the most educated in the region.
Unjha, the BJP workers say, was lost due to the Patidar strife in 2017. As many as 75,000 to 80,000 of the 2,32,800 voters in the region are Patidars, while 60,000 are Thakors. The rest of the voters are from the Other Backward Classes. Patidars can further be divided into three sub-castes—Kadwa Patels who account for 18,000, and about 4,000 stay outside the city. There are also Rusad Patels (numbering 4,000) and Molot Patels (about 3,000).
Mandal is a Patidar from the Rusad Patel community, while Congress’s candidate Arvind Patel is a Kadwa Patel. The Patel vote has traditionally divided 70:30 between BJP and Congress respectively, but in 2017 that changed due to the agitation.
Congress leaders say that while Mandal is a good man, his foray into politics is new. “He is not known among voters,” says party president Chetan Patel.
The Congress’s candidate is a party worker and not a leader, say local leaders, and so they fear he might not be able to draw the votes. “This seat has only come to the Congress twice after Independence—in 1972 and 2017,” the leader said. So the hopes are not too high, they admit.
Region overlooked
On the other hand, in nearby Mansa, on the outskirts of Gandhinagar town, the Congress is putting up a spirited fight. Babubhai Patel, who is speaking to his voters at a Jan Sabha in the outskirts of Limbodra village, says that the region has always voted for the Congress, and has suffered because the BJP overlooks. “There is a canal but no water, the drinking water is also not potable. These are things we hope to fix,” he says. Patel won the seat on a Congress ticket in 2012.
Since then, Congress has been winning here. Amitbhai Harisingbhai Chaudhary of the Congress, who won in 2017, defected to the BJP but lost the ensuing byelections to the Congress candidate, Sureshkumar Chaturdas Patel, by 500 odd votes.
At the BJP office, where Amitbhai is in charge of affairs, he says the building was an oasis during Covid time. “We sanitised every one of the 64,000 households, got 27,000 Ayushman Bharat cards made, and 18,000 people are now getting the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi,” Chaudhary says.
BJP leaders claimed that door-to-door canvassing was the core of their campaign. But they say they got 10 days less than Congress to start their campaign as their candidate was declared later.
Some leaders say that the BJP has always lost here due to “internal politics”. Amit Shah, they say, is managing affairs personally and leaders have been given responsibility of 20,000-30,000 voters each. It also helps that BJP’s candidate, J S Patel, is one of the richest in the state.
The Mansa seat has over 2,30,800 votes, with 52,000 votes from the Patidars, 42,000 from the Thakors, and 14,000 from the Kshtriyas. A huge chunk (over 1,20,000) is OBCs, which Congress leaders claim are their vote bank.
The Congress, on the other hand, says they have also resorted to door-to-door campaigning. “Here few people will vote in support of Modi ji,” says one leader. “Whoever wins in Mansa has to cut their teeth in the Congress first.”