BJP’s strategy of fielding new faces worked in ensuring Gujarat victory

(Image: Twitter @narendramodi)

The strategy of bringing in new faces played a key role in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s landslide victory in Gujarat.

The ruling party retained the western state for a record seventh term, winning 156 seats, most of them from its traditional stronghold of south Gujarat.

"BJP has won with a thumping majority because it's policies and schemes that have benefited everyone in the state. Moreover, people have great faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is taking country forward in a positive direction. Our poll strategy was to win 15o seats and that mark has been achieved," Zubin Ashara, BJP state media head.

In the run-up to the assembly polls, the BJP central leadership denied tickets to 42 incumbent members, including five ministers from chief minister Bhupendra Patel’s cabinet and assembly speaker Nimaben Acharya.

The decision to drop sitting legislators and field new candidates was taken keeping in view the possibility of anti-incumbency. The party did not want to take any chances and held a series of meetings to select the fresh candidates, party leaders said.

The poll strategy and selection of candidates was supervised by Union home minister Amit Shah. The party had deputed teams across the 182 assembly constituencies in the state to get feedback from workers at the grassroots level.

Most of the legislators dropped were from the urban areas of the state, where the Aam Aadmi Party, a new entrant in the state polls, was trying to corner the ruling party on the performance of MLAs.

The BJP changed candidates in all four seats of Rajkot. It dropped junior minister for transport and civil aviation Arvind Raiyani. Govind Patel from Rajkot South, who accused the then police commissioner Manoj Agrawal of corruption, was also dropped.

In three of the five urban seats in Vadodara, the party dropped Akota MLA Seema Mohile and chose Chaitanya Desai, son of late Makrand Desai, one of the early founders of the Jana Sangh in the state who went on to become the first state president BJP.

In Ahmedabad, the BJP dropped 12 members and retained only three sitting MLAs including chief minister Patel.

Party officials said aggressive campaigning by AAP, which won 27 seats in the civic elections in 2021, was the main reason for side-lining incumbent members.

Also, the BJP’s image was dented due to allegations of mismanagement during the pandemic and non-performance in carrying out developmental works in various assembly segments.

Over 4,000 aspirants had sought tickets from the BJP to contest the elections that were held on December 1 and 5.