Congress shocked by Gujarat results: LK Advani
Overwhelmed with the clean sweep of his party at Gujarat municipal and panchayat polls, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader LK Advani said the results have been a ?shock? to its main rival party Congress.
?I do not recall the election result of civic bodies in any state causing such a political upheaval as has occurred in Gujarat last week. The Congress party in the state has been shocked by the results of the Municipal and Panchayat elections,? said Advani in his latest blog.
?Gujarat Congress President Siddharth Patel has tendered his resignation owning ?moral responsibility? for the defeat. The Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly and Congress Party Leader, Shaktisinh Gohil has also quit his post,? said the veteran BJP leader.
In Gujarat there are six Municipal Corporations- Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara, Surat, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar.
Polling in these Corporations took place on October 10. The BJP made a clean sweep in these elections and won all the six Corporations.
On 21st October the second round of civic elections took place. While the first round involved a totally urban electorate, the second round covered partly urban, but predominantly a rural population.
In this round 53 municipalities, 24 district panchayats and 208 taluka panchayats went to polls.
Of the 53 municipalities, the BJP has won 42 and Congress just 4. Seven bodies have gone to others.
In case of the 24 Districts Panchayat elections the BJP has won 21 and Congress 2. One is undecided.
The results in the 208 Taluka Panchayats have been as follows: BJP 155, Congress 37 and Undecided 6.
The BJP posted significant victories even in the fiefdoms of Congress heavyweights like Union Ministers Bharat Singh Solanki (Anand) and Dinsha Patel (Kheda).
?A remarkable feature of this election has been the victory of more than one hundred Muslim candidates who contested on the BJP ticket at various levels. Yet another significant achievement for the BJP has been its victory in Dang region which has sizeable tribal Christian population,? Advani blogged.
In Central Gujarat, in Saurashtra and in Kutch, the Congress has suffered serious setbacks.
?Narendra Bhai Modi (Gujarat chief minister) has rightly observed that Muslims and Christians are evidently disillusioned with vote bank politics, and have accepted BJP?s development politics,? said Advani.
He further wrote: ?The BJP had hoped to win these elections. But I must admit that the results have surpassed all our expectations.This time?s outcome is not just a defeat, it is a decimation of the Congress in Gujarat.?
?New Delhi would do well to understand that such results do not indicate just a preference for some party, they are pointers also to the electorate?s passionate rage against some party.?
Advani also recalled the 1977 Lok Sabha poll in North India, when out of the 304 Lok Sabha seats extending from Jammu &Kashmir state to West Bengal, the Congress could get just 12 seats. In Punjab, Haryana Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the party could not win a single seat.
?If New Delhi thinks that it is just a failure of the Gujarat Congress leadership, it is sorely mistaken.?
?The Union Government and the Congress leadership should do some introspection about all this, and see in these results a forewarning for the 2012 Assembly polls,? blogged Advani.