Analysis of Gujarat Election Results 2022

Gujarat Election Results 2022: Indian politics is dynamic. Although, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been emphasising on ‘One Nation One Election’ policy, it is still a distant dream. India, recently, saw a dry run to the general elections of 2024. Three important elections, national capital’s MCD, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat assembly elections, were conducted along with by-polls in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.

The election was important in another way. The Bhartiya Janata Party, for whom Gujarat happened to be a prestige battle, has won it with a never before seen mandate. The Aam Aadmi Party has finally become a national party and the Congress has been pushed to the brink of extinction in Delhi and Gujarat, which symbolise the North and West, basically the Hindi belt. However, Congress has won Himachal.

The historic mandate in Gujarat

The people of Gujarat scripted history on Thursday. The Bhartiya Janata Party, under the charismatic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the two stalwart leaders of the party, swept the elections with a thumping majority of 156 seats out of 182 seats.

The saffron party has been in power since 1995, however, it never had such a landslide victory. In 2002, the party won 149 seats, which used to be a record, now lies broken.

Not an easy win for the BJP

Gujarat is a ‘BJP state’ or say a ‘BJP bastion’, and there must be no debate about that. However, the elections this time were not an easy task because Anti-incumbency was real in the state. Vijay Rupani was made to exit and the chair was handed over to Bhupendra Patel. However, the Patel factor was considered during the rejig. Bhupendra Patel remained an unpopular CM, the reason why he was not the face of campaign.

There were many volatile issues, ranging from low MSPs for farmers to State’s retreat from education to government job examination paper leaks. However, despite all odds, the BJP has emerged victorious the seventh time, with numbers like never before and there is a lot to analyse.

The first comes as PM Modi’s political power and influence remains concrete. PM Modi’s charisma remains undimmed, as the BJP has fought the elections on his name. However, all that the BJP was actually aiming for was something around 130. It was the AAP that helped the BJP by eliminating the Congress in Gujarat.

Also read: Congress is inching closer to being reduced as a regional party

Behind the landslide victory

Let’s begin with the analysis of Hardik Patel, a recent entrant into the BJP. Hardik gained 99,155 votes, whereas the Congress candidate Lakhabhai gained 42,724 and the AAP candidate Amarsinh Thakor gained 47,448 votes. If there would have been no AAP candidate, the majority of these votes would have been gone to the Congress.

This is just an example of the phenomenon witnessed widely on many seats in the state. What else happened is that the presence of Aam Aadmi Party forced the fence sitters to jump into the BJP camp.

Also read: Congress’ power is gone, it’s time for the party to be gone

The curious case of AAP in Gujarat

The AAP had contested 29 seats in the 2017 elections and got around 29,000 votes, which accounts for 0.1 per cent of the total. This time, the party contested on every seat except Surat (East) and got 12.9 per cent of the total votes polled, that is 41,12,055. However, to your surprise, the party just won 5 seats and lost its deposit on 126 seats.

The seats that AAP won are the seats that Congress lost. In Gariadhar, AAP got 60,944 votes, BJP got 56,125 votes and Congress got 15,099 votes. In 2017, BJP got 50,635 votes and Congress got 48,759 votes. While BJP has gained got around 5,500 more votes, Congress has lost over 33,000 votes.

In Botad, AAP got 80,581 votes, BJP got 77,802 and Congress got 19,058 votes. In 2017, BJP got 79,623 votes and Congress got 78,717 votes. AAP got a major share of Congress’s votes to win the seat. The same happened in the tribal belt, where the AAP helped BJP snatch the tribal seats from Congress, for whom it happened to be an impregnable fortress.

What happened on the rest of the fifty seats? Just like the aforementioned scenario, AAP candidates ate into the Congress’ vote bank, thus serving the BJP around 20-30 seats on the golden platter.