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BJP sweeps the 26-seat board in Gujarat

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat swept the board on Friday by bagging all the 26 seats which were up for grabs in the April 30 Lok Sabha elections.

The saffron party, powered by Narendra Modi’s nationwide electrifying campaign, snuffed out the Congress hopes of winning at least in four constituencies from where three federal ministers and one former federal minister were contesting.

Indeed, Dinshaw Patel (Kheda), Bharat Solanki (Anand), Tushar Chaudhary (Bardoli) as well as former federal textile minister and Chief Minister suffered ignominious defeats, losing by huge margin of votes against their little-known BJP challengers.

Sonia Gandhi’s party, however, took solace from the fact that it captured three of the seven assembly seats for which by-elections were held along with general polls, leaving four seats for the BJP in the bi-polar state being ruled by the saffron party since 1998.

Apart from Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, who emerged triumphant in Vadodara with a record victory margin of 570,128 votes, other prominent victorious BJP contestants included L K Advani (Gandhinagar) and Bollywood actor Paresh Rawal (Ahmedabad East).

A jubilant Rawal, when he had established an unbeatable lead over his Congress rival commented: Mahatma Gandhi had given us independence in 1947 nad now Modi has given second independence”.

All the winners, including Rawal, admitted that they had hardly done any campaigning and had been elected with big margins because of Modi’s single-handed barn-storming. The clean sweep of 26 seats brought about by the Modi wave has smashed the 24-seat win record registered by Madhavsinh Solanki-led Congress in 1984.

Celebrations started throughout Gujarat from 10 am itself as soon as, say BJP leaders, it was crystal-clear that a Gujarati (Modi) would become India’s next Prime Minister. Modi, who was busy watching television in his official bungalow in Gandhinagar, himself immediately drove to his mother’s home nearby and sought her blessings.

Later, he went to nearby Koba where the Gujarat BJP’s new headquarters are located and thanked the voters and partymen. He was scheduled to fly to Vadodara to address a meeting and return to Ahmedabad in the late evening for another rally after which he will go round in a roofless bus to greet voters.

In 2009, the BJP had won 15 of the Lok Sabha 26 seats, leaving 11 for the Congress which later surrendered two more seats in by-polls.

Counting of votes for the 26 Lok Sabha seats began at 8 am at 27 centres across the state heavy police bandobast.

There are some 2,400 counting tables in all the 27 counting centres. About 8,000 officials were involved in the counting exercise throughout Gujarat and every counting table had a federal government official acting as a micro observer.

In all, 334 candidates were in the fray for 26 seats in the state where the main fight was between Congress and the BJP though 32 other parties, including the Aam Aadmi Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal-U, the Bahujan Samaj Party, also had fielded their little-known candidates.

Kanhal Jadeja, the lone candidate of the National Congress Party which was offered the Porbandar seat by the Congress, was also vanquished by the BJP’s Vitthal Radadia.