BJP is on damage control exercise, Twenty five of the 70 candidates declared in the first list by the BJP belong to OBCs in Gujarat
Abdul Hafiz Lakhani/ AHMEDABAD
It was quite clear that the BJP would be generous with the community in the 2017 Assembly polls to be held in Gujarat, as the party’s major vote bank, the Patel community, stood against the party on the issue of reservation. The party announced the names of candidates for 70 of the 182 seats and as many as 25 seats have been given to the OBC community leaders. Community wise, OBC has 55 per cent space.
Party president Amit Shah had himself indicated from the floor of the last Assembly session held in August and that was again his last day in the house. Shah had said that the core agendas of Gujarat elections would be the OBC community and Narmada project. The party has also seen that the OBC community have not wavered from BJP to any other party in the last 10 years.
A very senior leader of the party said, “Ever since Narendra Modi became the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he gave special attention to the OBC community and many castes like Koli, Thakor, Chaudhary and others showed their trust in the BJP in form of votes during every elections thereafter. The community has the greatest vote share in the state. So this is natural that tickets would be given to the community, which has dominance in state.”
“There are almost 146 castes included the OBC category as per the OBC Commission in the state. But the dominant castes are only 10 to 8 in this category. The party has given preference to such leaders who have great following in thier castes and they are Koli, Thakor, Chaudhary, Ahir and others. This is the best combination and balance of caste equation in Gujarat. The rest of 112 candidates also will represent other communities,” the leader added.
Political observers say that the thakor community is concentrated in around 40-45 seats in districts like Sabarkantha, Banaskantha, Anand, Kheda, Mehsana, Patan, Gandhinagar and Aravalli.These are seats where the thakor community makes up 25%-35% of total votes. In many of these, thakors voters number from 50,000 to more than 1 lakh out of the 2-2.5 lakh voters. These are huge numbers and if they vote in favour of a leader of their community, their numbers can turn electoral fortunes,” said a senior a leader.Although the Thakor community has traditionally been a Congress votebank, after the 2002 riots, Narendra Modi had significant success in consolidating OBC votes into Hindu votes.
Rejecting the reports about her ‘annoyance’ on ignorance of her supporters during BJP candidates selection in Gujarat, former CM and senior party leader Anandiben Patel today said that there were no individual supporters in the party and everybody was just a supporter of BJP.She said that the rumours about her annoyance might be the attempt of Congress with an intention to create rift in BJP.
Anandiben also said that the selection of candidates was being done as per laid procedure and with full consensus.Talking to newsmen Anandiben, who was first and so far only woman CM of Gujarat said that as per the tradition this time also the party observers took opinions in all the 182 seats and then put it before the party which in its state parliamentary board meetings discussed things threadbare and then forwarded the panel of probable candidates to central parliamentary board to take a final call. There was complete consensus.
‘Now I from the core of my heart congratulate all the 70 candidates declared in the first list and wish them a grand victory. The people of Gujarat know that theour PM is also from this state and will make BJP win 150 seats,’ she said.