Ahmedabad: The Bharatiya Janta Party’s near clean sweep (25-1) in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah was not a cakewalk for the ruling party that has been in power in Gujarat for over 25 years. The BJP was hoping to win all 26 seats for the third time in a row after 2014 and 2019, but fell short as Congress managed to bag the OBC-dominated Banaskantha seat after 10 years.
The victory for the BJP, facing opposition from within the party cadre, was a major booster. However, there were no celebrations across the state in the wake of the recent fire tragedy in Rajkot that claimed 27 lives.
It was not the anti-incumbency factor that worried the saffron party, but the dissent within the BJP cadre that underlined the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat. The ruling party, since the beginning of the election campaign, had focused on higher victory margins as it was certain that Gujarat being their home turf, people would vote them back to power.
To begin with, the party’s decision to drop as many as 14 sitting MPs and give opportunity to new faces, had irked many of the senior leaders and party workers. There were protests in several districts including Sabarkantha and Vadodara by party workers soon after the list of candidates was declared. On not finding their leader’s name on the list, several workers staged protests in the two districts.
BJP had to change its candidates for two Lok Sabha seat, Vadodara and Sabarkantha.
The BJP scored early with Mukesh Dalal winning the Surat Lok Sabha seat unopposed after the nomination of the Congress’ Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected over the alleged irregularities in the signature of his proposers and withdrawal of nomination by other candidates. However, a day before the counting, the Congress had approached the Gujarat high court with an election petition, challenging the decision of the Surat election officer to reject Kumbhani’s nomination.
The big wigs in fray from Gujarat include Union Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar seat and Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya who was contesting his first Lok Sabha election from Porbandar. Another BJP heavyweight Union Minister Parshottam Ruapal contested from Rajkot parliamentary seat.
Shah broke his own record by winning the Gandhinagar seat with a margin of over 7.44 lakh votes over his nearest Congress rival Sonal Patel of the Congress. The union minister seeking his second term from the seat got more than 10 lakh votes, (vote share of over 76.48%) while Patel received over 2.66 lakh votes (20% vote share).
In the 2019 election, Shah won from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat by a margin of more than 5.57 lakh votes.
The most controversial BJP candidate for the Gujarat 2024 general elections union minister Purushottam Rupala contesting from the Saffron bastion Rajkot was leading with over 4.73 lakh votes against his closet rival Congress’ Paresh Dhanani. Rupala was leading with over 8.27 lakh votes in his favour while Dhanani polled a little over 3.54 lakh votes during the final round of counting.
“This was a battle of ideologies. Somewhere or somehow, I feel, the ruling BJP has been successful in instilling fear and threat among the people of Gujarat,” said Dhanani after accepting his defeat.
During the earlier phase of the campaign, the BJP faced the ire of the Kshatriya community over Rupala’s remark claiming that several erstwhile rulers from the community had "roti and beti" (marriage and trade) relations with the British and other foreign invaders.
Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil was leading with a margin of over 7.6 lakh votes in the last round of counting. He received 10.21 lakh votes while his nearest rival Congress’s Naishad Desai got 2.5 lakh votes. In 2019, Paatil had a 74% vote share with 9.72 lakh votes. However, this year he broke his own record for votes received and vote share (77%).
Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya was set to win the Porbandar LS seat with a margin of over 3.8 lakh votes against his nearest rival Lalit Vasoya of the Congress. This was Mandaviya's first Lok Sabha election. Mandaviya got over 6.25 lakh vote, while Vasoya received 2.45 lakh votes.
In the ST seat of Bharuch in South Gujarat region, veteran BJP parliamentarian Mansukh Vasava defeated Aam Aadmi Party (AAP’s) first-time MLA Chaitar Vasava by a margin of 85,696 votes. The six-term MP from Bharuch Mansukh Vasava won the seventh term with over 6 lakh votes (about 50% vote share), while Chaitar Vasava got 5.22 lakh votes (43.58% vote share).
Congress’s tough contenders
Congress’s Geniben Thakor from Banaskantha seat and her party’s Chandanji Thakor contesting the Patan parliamentary constituency gave the BJP a nightmare as counting rounds progressed during the day. After every round, the candidate in the lead would change in both Patan and Banaskantha seats, which are OBC-dominated seats. This continued for nearly 12 rounds. However, post the 13th round Chandanji in Patan started trailing while Geniben in Banaskantha took the lead.
When the last round of counting was on, Geniben was leading with over 30,000 votes over her rival BJP’s Rehkha Chaudhary. Geniben had received over 6.71 lakh votes (48.8% vote share) against Chaudhary’s 6.41 lakh (46.62% vote share).
Congress’s candidate Chandanji could not regain the momentum and was trailing by nearly 30,000 votes at the end of the last round. BJP’s candidate from Patan Bharatsinh Dabhi received 5.84 lakh votes against Chandanji’s 5.54 lakh votes.
Even as the counting was underway, Geniben said it was a victory for the people of Banaskantha.
“Satyamev Jayate,” she said in her first reaction after gaining a comfortable lead.
A total of 433 candidates had filed their nominations for the general elections to 26 seats, out of which nomination papers of 105 candidates were rejected. By the last withdrawal date on April 22, 62 candidates had withdrawn their nominations. Consequently, the total number of contesting candidates for the Lok Sabha elections is 266. Among them, 247 are male and 19 female candidates. The voting percentage in Gujarat was 60.13% as against 64.11% in 2019.
