The Central Gujarat region, comprising seven districts, stands out for its diversity.
While Vadodara is highly industrialised and Anand is famous for India’s milk revolution, Chhota Udepur, Dahod, Panchmahal and Mahisagar are tribal districts. Kheda, along with Anand, is a centre of OBC politics, though a few Patidar pockets do exist.
The former Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, known for the Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim (KHAM) formula that worked well for the Congress in the State till the mid-1980s, is from Anand.
The 38 seats in the region will prove crucial for the two parties, the Congress traditionally dominating tribal and rural areas and the BJP winning in urban pockets, especially Vadodara city.
The scene changed following the post-Godhra riots that rocked the region in 2002, when the BJP swept the polls for the first time.
However, in 2007 and 2012, the Congress won back those seats which went to the BJP following the riots. But in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP again swept the region, winning all six Lok Sabha seats.
With Dahod, Panchmahal and Chhota Udepur remaining backward, more than five lakh tribespeople from these districts go as migrant labourers to construction sites in big cities such as Ahmedabad and Vadodara and as farm labourers in Saurashtra.
Cosmopolitan Vadodara, the region’s main city and formerly Gujarat’s largest princely state ruled by the Gaekwads, is regarded as the cultural capital of the State.
Three years after the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress suffered a jolt when four seasoned leaders and legislators from the region defected. The then Leader of the Opposition, Shankersinh Vaghela, Amul Dairy chairman Ramsinh Parmar, Mansinh Chauhan and C.K. Raolji, all MLAs, left the party during the Rajya Sabha elections in August.
Defections in Congress
“We were very strong in the central region, but now with defections of grassroots leaders, we may not be able to retain the crucial region this time,” a senior Congress leader told The Hindu.
“The BJP has set its focus on this region to offset some losses it may suffer in Saurashtra.”
With Mr. Parmar’s exit from the Congress, the party has lost control over important district cooperative dairies in Kheda, Anand, Vadodara and Panchmahal.
In Kheda, the Congress had won five of the seven seats in the 2012 Assembly polls, but with Mr. Parmar, Mr. Vaghela and Mr. Chauhan leaving the party, the party’s strength diminished.
The Congress is facing infighting in Chhota Udepur with Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Mohansinh Rathwa, former Union Minister Narain Rathva and Sukhram Rathwa at loggerheads and creating impediments for the party to hold its sway in tribal constituencies.
In Vadodara city, which has five Assembly seats, the Congress hardly has any base to challenge the BJP’s dominance.
However, the Congress has devised a strategy to retain its hold over the tribal voters by raising the issue of non-allotment of forestland to tribal people under the forest rights Act
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, during his recent visit to tribal pockets in Dahod, said the BJP would not give them forest lands because it wanted to hand over land parcels to industries.
“What has the BJP given to the tribal people in this region? Despite the central Act, the forest land rights have not been given to us. In all tribal talukas, there are many vacancies in government schools and health centres, but the government has not made any effort to fill them,” Mr. Mohansinh Rathwa said.
The BJP, however, blames the Congress for the poor development of tribal areas. “Our PM has included Dahod in the Smart City scheme; so the Centre is providing financial resources to develop infrastructure in the district with more than 60% tribal population,” Union Minister Jaswantsinh Bhabhor, who is the Dahod MP, said.
