BJP EYES A HAT TRICK OF SWEEPS

BEYOND PM MODI'S POPULARITY, A WELL-OILED GOVERNMENT AND PARTY MACHINERY HAS CEMENTED THE PARTY'S INVINCIBILITY IN GUJARAT

- Jumana Shah

As the mercury inches up daily in Gujarat this summer, so does the frenetic activity on the ground for the BJP before the Lok Sabha polls. State BJP president C.R. Paatil and Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel have been crisscrossing the state, addressing three to four gatherings of booth worker committees in a day. Their goal is to connect with over 7.4 million members of the page committee—five chosen voters amongst the 30 on each page of the state’s electoral roll comprise a ‘page committee’—before the large rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, also the candidate from Gandhinagar, take place. The target for the BJP is to garner 500,000 votes on each seat this time; the maths translates to 370 more votes for the party in each booth than it had got in 2019.

BJP announced all 26 candidates by mid-March; the Congress could not finalise its 24 candidates till mid-April. The AAP has fielded candidates on two seats— Bhavnagar and Bharuch—as part of the INDIA alliance.