Despite all odds against him and his party, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi fought the 2007 Assembly elections almost single-handedly and on Sunday, earned a resounding victory for the BJP in the state, trouncing the weak and faction-ridden Congress at the hustings. Of the total 182 seats, the BJP bagged 117, while the Congress had to remain content with 59. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which had entered into the seat-sharing with the Congress, opened its account by winning three seats—Sarsa, Gondal and Devgadh Baria—while one seat went to the Janata Dal (U) and two to Independents. Other smaller parties, like Mayawati’s BSP and Uma Bharati’s BJSP, failed to make any impact on the Gujarat electorate. Interestingly, despite the evident “Moditva” factor during the electioneering, as many as seven of the BJP ministers lost the elections. They included three Cabinet-rank ministers — I K Jadeja (Urban Development and Roads & Building), Kaushik Patel (Revenue) and Bhupendrasinh Chudasma (Agriculture) —and four Ministers of State—Chhatrasinh Mori, Prabhatsinh Chauhan, Ratibhai Sureja and Dilip Thakore.Modi won by an impressive margin of about 87,000 votes from Maninagar constituency in Ahmedabad, defeating Congress candidate and Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dinsha Patel, who is now expected to resume his work in the ministry. Modi’s confidence could be gauged from the fact that he did not spend even a single day campaigning for himself in Maninagar, a Patel-dominated constituency.Region-wise poll results show the BJP wrested 26 seats from the Congress, interestingly in Saurashtra, Kutch and South Gujarat regions, where it was expected to lose. The Congress on the other hand managed to get back as many as 34 seats from the BJP in Central Gujarat, of which only eight are from Saurashtra. Among the seven BJP rebel MLAs who fought the elections on a Congress ticket, only one candidate, Bavku Unghad, won from Babra in Amreli district. Prominent among the Congress candidates who lost at the hustings were its state women’s wing chief and former minister Chandrika Chudasma from Mangrol, Jasha Barad from Somnath, Dinesh Parmar from Jamnagar (Rural), Punjabhai Vansh from Una, C J Chavda from Gandhinagar, Madhubhai Bhoye from Dangs, Balwantsinh Rajput from Sidhpur, Maljibhai Desai from Chanasma, Govabhai Rabari from Deesa, Dolat Parmar from Vadgam, Narhari Amin from Matar and Sukhram Rathwa from Chhota Udepur. In Kutch, out of the six seats, the Congress could win only Rapar seat, where former finance minister Babu Meghji Shah managed to win just over 5,000 votes. In the 2002 polls, the Congress had bagged four of the six seats in this border district. The two BJP rebel MLAs, Narendrasinh Jadeja and Gopal Dhuva, who contested on the Congress ticket from Abdasa and Mundra in this district, lost to the BJP. In contrast, the two Congress rebel MLAs, Nimaben Acharya and Pabubha Manek, who were roped in by Modi to fight on a BJP ticket, were elected from Anjar and Dwarka constituencies.
