AHMEDABAD: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unleashed a slew of development works in his home state due for polls later this year. He will visit Vadodara on June 18 where he will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for various projects worth over Rs 21,000 crore.
Vadodara Gujarat has been the BJP’s comfort zone. Modi had selected the Vadodara seat in 2014 for his Lok Sabha election. The party rules all local bodies, in the city. In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP won all seven seats in the Vadodara Lok Sabha constituency.
Central Gujarat comprises Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Anand, Kheda, Dahod, Panchmahal, and Chhota Udaipur districts and sends 61 MLAs to the Assembly. Tribal communities, OBCs, and Patidars are dominant in the region. If trends are any indication, the Congress generally wins in tribal-dominated areas whereas the BJP wins in OBC and Patidar-dominated areas. However, things could be vastly different in the 2022 election.
Central Gujarat has the highest number of a dozen reserved seats for tribal communities. The Vadodara City seat is reserved for the Dalit community. Amit Dholakia, head of Political Science, MS University, says caste-based politics has been weakening since Modi’s rise in Gujarat, especially in Central Gujarat.
Once considered a Congress bastion, the results of the last two polls show that BJP has won in the Congress constituencies as well. “The way Modi is campaigning in central Gujarat, the Congress could be wiped out,” said Dholakia.
“BJP faces no challenge in central Gujarat. AAP is inactive and the Congress has no effective leadership. The larger picture at the moment appears most favourable for the BJP,” said Dholakia.