Ahmedabad: The BJP leads in Gujarat has crossed 150 -- a record in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, surpassing the Congress score of 149 in 1985. Back then, Madhavsinh Solanki rose on the social coalition KHAM (Koli Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim). Today, the Grand Old Party might be headed for its worst score ever, confined to teens by the massive BJP surge.
Gujarat has 182 Assembly seats and the majority mark is 92.
While the BJP score appeared to bear out speculation that AAP's entry had acted as a catalyst, cutting into Congress votes, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya rubbished the possibility.
"In Gujarat, it is Modi Ji's tapasya (hard work)," he told NDTV in an exclusive interview, crediting the Prime Minister, who led the campaign with more than 30 rallies since the election was announced.
The BJP's best score was 127 in 2002 assembly elections, held months after the post-Godhra riots. Since then, the party had been on a downward spiral. In 2017, it was confined to a below-100 score (99) by a resurgent Congress.
This time, the party has done well in every region of Gujarat. So far, the BJP has received 55 per cent vote share, the Congress 27 and AAP 13.3 per cent.
The BJP's former state minister Jai Narayan Vyas, however, sounded a discordant note. "BJP winning in Gujarat was not unexpected, the question was how many seats it will get. My personal belief is the BJP will climb down to 125 seats and the rest of the seats will go to Congress and AAP. But the BJP has done very well," he told reporters.
AAP, which had conducted an all-out campaign and won the civic polls in Delhi in a straight fight with the BJP, appears set to open account in Gujarat, barely. While party chief Arvind Kejriwal had predicted an out and out victory yesterday, after the civic poll results were declared, so far, AAP leads have practically been confined to single digits.
The BJP had earlier brushed off the AAP challenge, saying they will figure nowhere in the election. In his rallies, PM Modi has made no reference to AAP.
The Congress has been battling factionalism and lack of direction since the death of Ahmed Patel -- its pointsman in the state -- in 2020. The party had carried out a low-key campaign, for which Rahul Gandhi spared a day from his Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The door-to-door push, which the state Congress conducted, was poles apart from the BJP's supersize, glitzy campaign.