Development as vote-catcher

Unlike 2002 and 2007, there was no communal angle in 2012, save a bit of the Ahmed ‘Miyan’ Patel talk on one side and the minority-in-danger from the other. Then, it was essentially a vote on Narendra Modi’s model of development. And it has worked. (In 2007, too, it was probably the same story except that the Sohrabuddin encounter story overshadowed discussions). In the process, Modi has found support across regions and communities in the state. Thus, Modi’s image has come out of the shadow of 2002. This should be his principal claim in 2014.

Number-crunching

Modi has been the longest-running chief minister of Gujarat, and earlier this year he had spoken of winning 150 seats – one more than Madhavsinh Solanki’s record of 1985. Modi (at around noon, when this was written) seems far below that figure, and also far below the figure floated in some exit polls. People in Gujarat looked at exit polls with a mix of scepticim and pragmatism: they said the direction would be right, details wrong.

Anyway, once the final figure is safely above the majority mark, Modi is the victor and there’s no point in the argument that a number lower than the last time would impact his prospects in Delhi. It is a hat-trick.

Keshubhai fails to fire
Keshubhai Patel has singularly failed to make any impact. The ire of the Patel lobby that he had seen has vanished. Even during the voting, he and many believed that while his Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) might not be able to win in good numbers, it would certainly eat into BJP’s votes. Most of its candidates were in BJP till last month and switched sides when they were denied the ticket. However, the GPP has not been able to affect even the Congress votes, much less the BJP ones.

Congress in drift

The Congress would find no consolation in the fact that it has improved its tally slightly. The party has to live with the fact that Modi is invincible in Gujarat, and it has no strategy in place to check him. The Congress has not been able to revive its grassroots-level networks and it has not been able to project one leader against Modi. Now, its only consolation or hope is that Modi as a prime ministerial candidate in 2014 would help it, thanks to polarisation within the BJP. In the days to come, expect it to work hard to revive 2002.

BJP in trouble ahead

This may seem counterintuitive but many BJP voters in Ahmedabad and elsewhere are saying that the day Modi takes a flight to Delhi, BJP would be wiped out in the state. There is no second rung of leadership here — Modi sought and got votes in his name. In several constituencies, the BJP candidates were rather weak and workers had no enthusiasm to canvass votes for them. But in the days before the voting they fell in line and pushed hard. A Gujarat BJP minus Modi will be placed worse than today’s Gujarat Congress.