The BJP on Wednesday trounced both the Opposition parties, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and beat back anti-incumbency of a 10-year reign, to win back the three local bodies in Delhi.
Party leader Sushil Kumar Modi said one of the main reasons the party managed to register such a huge win was the dropping of almost all the sitting councillors to give ticket to fresh faces. “Narendra bhai had once replaced all councillors in Gujarat and 2/3rd majority in a local body election,” the former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister recalled in a tweet. “Same strategy worked in MCD.”
Gujarat too?
There are, in fact, mutterings in party circles already that this dropping of sitting members will be done in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly polls too, as a way of cutting local anti-incumbency after the party’s 19-year rule in the State.
“Narendra bhai, when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, had done this in successive Assembly elections, in 2007 and 2012, and it is likely that it will be done in 2017 as well. As many as 60% of sitting MLAs may be dropped,” said a senior office bearer of the party.
“But the thing to note is that he could do this because his leadership carried that authority within the party that there was no question of any effective, large scale rebellion,” said the source. In Delhi too, there was no rebellion after initial hiccups.
The Gujarat BJP is struggling with a 19-year anti-incumbency, and the aftermath of the Patidar agitation where many MLAs were targeted in their areas by locals on the issue of reservations. While the party recovered some ground in local body polls held subsequently, it will be interesting to see how many MLAs are repeated as candidates.
Poll-bound States
Apart from Himachal and Karnataka, the other States going to polls in the next two years have BJP governments — States like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — and party leaders say that this “Gujarat model” of shedding local anti-incumbency may well be put to use in those States.
