Gujarat civic polls: BJP blames Patel stir for poor show in rural areas
Faced with big losses to the Congress in rural areas, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday sought to blame the patidar reservation protests for its unimpressive show in the Gujarat civic polls.
“The BJP has done work in rural areas. But with the kind of social engineering done by the Congress of late, the results for the BJP are below expectation, BJP vice-president I K Jadeja said referring to the quota stir.
With counting in its final stages, the Congress was leading in most of the district and taluka panchayats, while the BJP was set to make a comeback in all the six municipal corporations.
The patidars led by 22-year old Hardik Patel, who is in jail on sedition charges, have been agitating over the last few months demanding inclusion of the community in the OBC reservation list.
Ahead of the local body elections, patidar leaders also appealed to members of the community to vote for the Congress.
But this appeal did not have much effect in the cities , with the BJP set to sweep all the municipal corporations including Surat which was the centre of the patidar agitation.
The BJP is winning in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar. In Hardik’s home area, ward number 2 of Viramgam nagarpalika, the BJP won all the four seats.
Latest figures showed the Congress ahead in 14 and the BJP in 13 district panchayats out of a total of 31 in the state.
The Congress was ahead in small towns as well, leading in 18 nagar palikas as against the BJP’s 12, in the first major elections in the state after Anandiben Patel took over from Narendra Modi as chief minister.
The polls were also seen as a challenge for the BJP after its debacle in the recent assembly elections in Bihar.
Voting for six municipal corporations was held on November 26, while that for 31 district panchayats, 230 taluka panchayats and 56 municipalities was held on November 29. The six municipal corporations registered only 45% voter turnout, but elsewhere it was over 60%.
Read full article: Hindustan Times
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