With 48 Seats, Saurashtra Region Holds Key To Power In Gujarat Polls
NDTV
For the Congress, which has been out of power in Gujarat for more than two decades, it is important that it sustains its 2017 performance in Saurashtra.
Gujarat's Saurashtra region, which accounts for 48 out of the total 182 Assembly seats in the state with a sizable Patidar and Other Backward Class (OBC) population, has the potential to tilt the power game in favour of or against the ruling BJP or opposition Congress in the next month's elections.
In the 2017 Assembly polls, the Congress had bagged 28 seats in this region, improving its previous election's tally of 15 and helping it restrict the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory count to 99. Political observers attributed the grand old party's impressive show in the region to the 2015 Patidar community's quota agitation that targeted the BJP government.
But improving the numbers or at least keeping them intact in the next month's Assembly polls would be a challenge for the Congress as unlike the reservation stir, there is no issue that would serve as an "emotional ground to unite" this time. Besides, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) can also pose a hurdle in the way, the observers feel.
The ruling BJP, which could win just 19 seats in the region in the 2017 elections as against 30 in 2012, is also making concerted efforts to regain its lost ground by poaching Congress MLAs.