AAP wins 13%, five assembly seats in Gujarat; top guns lose

AHMEDABAD: Just ahead of polling in the high-stakes Gujarat battle, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal had put two things on paper. One — his party leaders Isudan Gadhvi, Gopal Italia and Alpesh Kathiria will win their respective seats in the Gujarat assembly election with huge margins, and two — AAP is forming the next government in Gujarat and Congress will get less than five seats.On Thursday, videos of his predictions went viral on social media as his outrageous claims got blown away in the Modi storm that swept elections for the BJP.
Hype surrounding the forceful entry of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into the political arena of PM Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat turned out to be a rather damp squib as the party won just five seats despite contesting on 180 of total 182 seats. Over 120-odd AAP candidates lost their deposits for not getting even one-sixth of the total votes polled. Bigger loss of face was that all top leaders — AAP’s chief ministerial face Isudan Gadhvi, state unit president Gopal Italia, former Patidar agitation leaders Alpesh Kathiria, Manoj Sorathiya, Dharmik Malaviya among others — were vanquished. Despite Kejriwal having led several roadshows and rallies in Surat, where AAP had won 27 municipal corporation seats in 2021, the party drew a blank in the diamond city which has a sizable number of Patidars.
Winning five seats — four in Saurashtra and one tribal seat in South Gujarat — the entrant party has got a toehold in Gujarat. Despite the drubbing of its candidates, the AAP will aim to build on its electoral gains in Gujarat. More significantly, by pocketing a popular vote of 12%, AAP gained the national party status.
“Over 40 lakh people voted for the AAP in Gujarat and contributed to making it a national political party. I thank voters for this,” said Italia.
The winning horses of the AAP include Chaitar Vasava, a former aide of tribal strongman Chhotu Vasava, who won the Dediapada seat by an impressive margin of 40,000 votes. Bhupendra Bhayani, trounced a Congress turncoat and BJP candidate Harshad Ribadiya on the Visavadar seat by 7,000 votes and Sudhir Vaghani who defeated BJP's Keshubhai Nakrani on Gariadhar seat by over 4,000 votes. In the Jamjodhpur seat, AAP's Hemant Ahir trounced former state minister Chiman Sapariya by a margin of over 10,000 votes. In Botad, Umesh Makwana of AAP defeated nearest rival Ghanshyam Virani of the BJP by nearly 3,000 votes.
The AAP national joint secretary and the CM face of the party, Isudan Gadhvi lost to the BJP's Mulu Bera on the Khambhaliya seat by a margin of 19,000 votes. In Surat's Katargam seat, state party president Gopal Italia lost comprehensively to a sitting minister Vinod Moradiya by a margin of around 65,000 votes.
On the keenly watched Jasdan seat, which BJP leader and Koli community strongman Kunvarji Bavaliya won by a margin of 16,070 votes, the AAP candidate polled more than 47,000 votes while the Congress candidate stood third, polling over 45,000 votes.
National party status for AAP
A high-decibel and hyper-local poll campaign, hinged to a ‘Delhi model’ riding on the promise of quality education, mohalla clinics, freebies like subsidised electricity and employment opportunities, formed the core of AAP’s outreach in Gujarat.
However, it failed to wean away the masses from the ‘Gujarat model’. What it did do was help AAP, which already had state party status in the three states of Delhi, Punjab and Goa, to become eligible for national party status. To be recognised as a state party, a political outfits needs to have secured at least 6% of valid votes polled and returned two MLAs. With 12.9% vote share and 5 MLAs, AAP fulfilled that criteria. Recognition in a fourth state, Gujarat, has made AAP eligible for national party status.