In December 2022, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to power in Gujarat by winning a record 156 out of 182 seats and a vote share of 52.5%, there was a general sense that there was no need for it to induct leaders from the Opposition. After all, its domination in the State was nearly complete.
However, that was not the case. Nearly a year after the Assembly polls, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Bhupendra Bhayani became the first legislator to resign from the House. A week later, Congress MLA Chirag Patel also resigned from the Assembly. In January 2024, four-time Congress MLA C.J. Chavda followed suit. And in March, Arjun Modhwadia, a former president of the Gujarat Congress and a former Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, and Arvind Ladani, a first-time MLA from the Congress, also resigned and moved to the BJP.
All the four legislators cited the Congress leadership and the party’s “lack of direction” as the reasons for their move. Mr. Modhwadia stated in his resignation letter that the Congress’s decision to “decline the invitation of Lord Ram’s temple consecration on Ayodhya” pushed him to sever ties with the party, which, he said, had become “like an NGO”.
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Sometime in the middle of these exits, former Union Minister and Rajya Sabha member from the Congress, Naran Rathwa, too quit the beleaguered party and joined the BJP. So did an independent MLA, Dharmendrasinh Vaghela, who had earlier left the BJP when he was not given a ticket to contest elections in 2022.
There is now a buzz in the corridors of power in Gandhinagar that the total number of Opposition MLAs in the Gujarat Assembly will be in single digits before the Lok Sabha elections. As of today, the Congress, which had 17 MLAs, is left with 13, and the AAP, which had five, now has four.
Nearly everyday, former legislators or panchayat leaders or leaders associated with cooperatives are inducted into the ruling party. This gives sense that it is impossible for any leader to survive in the political sphere or in public life if they are not with the BJP.
Since 2007, more than 100 leaders from the Congress, including dozens of legislators and parliamentarians, have jumped ship and are today ministers, MPs, or MLAs. Since 2017, the pace at which Congress leaders have been moving to the BJP has accelerated.
Ministers in Gujarat including Balvantsinh Rajput, Raghavji Patel, and Kunwarji Bavaliya; Union Minister Devusinh Chauhan; Rajya Sabha MP Narhari Amin; and several others such as Hardik Patel, who was at the forefront of the Patidar quota agitation, and Alpesh Thakor, the face of the Other Backward Classes, were brought in from the Congress.
For the BJP, the idea of an Opposition-mukt (free) Gujarat means that those who cannot be defeated electorally must be co-opted into the party either with incentives or through coercion or a mix of both. “Nobody joins the ruling party out of love,” said a Congress leader who joined the BJP a few years ago. “There are various factors prompting these moves and they vary from person to person. However, the underlying factor is that in Gujarat, most politicians have businesses or business interests. And to protect them, they make these decisions or cut deals. Managing a business is impossible if you are not on the right side of the regime nowadays.”
However, it is equally true that many leaders in the Congress are frustrated with the lack of leadership and direction from the party high command. “There has been no communication from the high command with the State leaders for many years,” a Congress legislator complained.
For the BJP, inducting leaders from the Opposition has only helped it further strengthen and expand its already massive base across the State. The party has won seven consecutive Assembly polls since 1995. Today, the BJP rules all the eight municipal corporations; the majority of the municipalities, and district and taluka panchayats; and all the cooperative institutions in Gujarat. Its vote share in the State in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was a staggering 63%; it won all the 26 seats.
However, the BJP would do well to focus on strengthening governance, improving socioeconomic indicators such as nutrition and educational standards, and filling up vacancies in public health centres and hospitals. For that to happen, the party high command must empower the local leadership to work instead of looking for direction from New Delhi for every governance decision.
