Rahul belies Amit Shah’s 150 seats claim in Gujarat

After the declaration of the results of the Gujarat elections which is the home turf of both prime minister Narendra Modi and BJP supremo Amit Shah and the saffron party’s strongest bastion, acheiving 99 seats i.e. sixteen seats less than the previous tally definitely speaks of fact that the ruling party at the centre as well as in 19 states of the country is on the downward sliding trend.

According to political analysts: one can conveniently come to the conclusion even a lay man can, they believe, that a party like Congress which has been constantly losing after Narendra Modi assumed the top slot of the country at the hustings has at least this time, though lost but improved its last terms tally from 61 to 77/ 78 thus enhancing its 16 MLAs and also the vote share compounded with bagging maximum seats in the rural areas sending a clear message that the people of Gujarat’s rural belt are not happy with the agrarian policies of the BJP led NDA government.

Not only this but the saffron party’s 5 ministers also lost elections to Congress candidates and also lost four seats in the religious oriented Somnath temple area where all the lawmakers belonged to BJP. What make things even more worsening for the BJP is the fact that even in the prime minister’s home seat of Vad Nagar the BJP’s sitting lawmaker lost to the Congress candidate. While there is no doubt that the BJP won for the sixth consecutive term in Gujarat after incessantly ruling for 22 protracted years but the prime minister Modi, BJP supremo and the entire state and central cabinet and leaders had to work hard on 24×7 basis to counter the Congress president’s powerful jaggernaut.

It may be recalled that the Nehru Gandhi scion had addressed 135 public meetings in Gujarat and eas involved in the hectic campaigning for over two months. This is the first time since Narendra Modi and his party gained power at the centre in 2014 that the PM and his entire party had to work so hard to counter Rahul Gandhi’s single handed political invasion including holding of seven public meetings on the last leg of campaigning. If the political analysts are to be believed, the expeditiously increasing political clout and anti BJP potential and attacking posture of the Congress president Rahul Gandhi that exhibited its positive result in the Gujarat elections bringing the BJP down by 16 seats and Congress up by the same number of law makers, the indications give an unabiguous impression that all is not good for the BJP in the incoming future.

The dynamic and befitting performance of Rahul Gandhi in the Gujarat elections single handedly makes one thing absolutely clear that he is emerging as a strong force to reckon with in the near future and if the Nehru Gandhi scion really reorganises and resurrects the entire party from the block to district to state to national level and makes sincere efforts to unite the entire anti BJP opposition things can definitely materialise favorably in 2019. Political analysts further add that the undesirable statements from the suspended leader of the Congress party calling the prime minister” Neech” and issuance of the statement by the senior leader and advocate Kapil Sibbal asking the apex court judge to defer the matter of construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya till 2019 election have cause much harm to the party and Rahul’s untiring efforts. Had these two incidents been avoided the party would hane performed more better and perhaps immensely favourable.

On the other hand after being belied by Rahul Gandhi’s influence that led to Congress increasing its previous tally from 61 to 78, and subsequently decreasing the tally of BJP to mere 99 from the previous 115, the disturbed Amit Shah is putting the entire blame on the former for stooping at the lowest ebb like propagating castism and other manipulations to bag votes while answering the queries of media. In fact earlier over confident Amit Shah claiming to bring 150 seats now have no option but to give such unconvincing reasoning. What’s your take, friends?

SUNIL NEGI