BJP rebels on the day-clueless and evasive

It was billed as the power shift that would prove to be the nemesis of Narendra Modi, but as results started trickling in on Sunday...

It was billed as the power shift that would prove to be the nemesis of Narendra Modi, but as results started trickling in on Sunday, it petered out with a whimper, leaving red faces that would remain as such for some time to come. Like the en masse coming of Patidars to the BJP in 1980s brought the party to the electoral centrestage, their going away en masse was to script the doom.

But in the end, the overlap of BJP rebels and the Leuva Patel angst not only failed to harm the party, but in fact added to Congress woes in the Kutch and Saurashtra region. Narendra Modi’s BJP increased its tally from 39 out of 58 seats in 2002, to 43 now. All five seats were wrested from the Congress.

Except for Bavku Undhad, who retained his hold on Babra seat of Amreli district contesting on a Congress ticket, every other rebel lost, including diamond baron Dhiru Gajera from Surat north. Bechar Bhadani, the BJP rebel who contested on Congress ticket from Lathi in Amreli district, when contacted, sounded flummoxed by the results. Asked why the Patidar factor failed, he said the results were beyond comprehension. “People’s verdict is all I can say. Can’t say further,” was his response.

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Amreli, the Ground Zero, called the clearest bluff with five of the six seats in the district going to the BJP, the same tally as in 2002. Most of the BJP rebels preferred to remain out of bounds. While Dr Vallabh Kathiria was in Delhi, Keshubhai spent the day at his Ahmedabad residence rather than Gandhinagar. Gordhan Zadaphia could not be contacted after results were out.

Though the shock of defeat, colossal as it was, first made the rebels avoid the media, some came out by evening to admit they had lost. The youngest of the rebels, Siddharth Parmar, was the most vocal and forthright. “If Modi has won despite our best efforts, it is clear that there were flaws in our strategy. There were also major flaws in our day-to-day tactics,” he admitted. According to Parmar, lack of cohesion between various individuals involved, failure to match Modi with nimble footedness, and to translate Patel angst into votes for the Congress, were among the reasons. “We cannot blame the Congress. We should have worked harder. If our leaders had come out more openly, the result would have been different,” he opined.

Some of the rebels are now realising the folly of singling out Modi for abuses in their public addresses. “That might have been the mistake, as it gave an impression of Modi being victimised by a bunch, which was clearly not the case,” said one of the rebels.

Dr A K Patel felt the need for reorienting the Sardar Patel Utkarsh Samiti — the umbrella body that was used to spearhead the anti-Modi campaign. “Perhaps we need to broad base the Sardar Patel Utkarsh Samiti to include minorities, Adivasis, and Dalits to strengthen it,” he said.