Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will be held in two phases on December 11 and 16 and November 11 and December 19 respectively.
Small state, but stakes are big
It’s Nov 11, Dec 19 in Himachal
DELHI: The Election Commission kicked off a dress rehearsal for the next general elections with the announcement of poll dates for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Assembly elections in Gujarat will be held in two phases on December 11 and 16 while Himachal Pradesh’s dates are November 11 and December 19, chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami told newspersons on Wednesday.
Although both states are relatively small – Gujarat sends 26 MPs and HP just four — these elections are loaded with political significance as they will bring the principal national parties, the Congress and the BJP, back into focus.
In both states, the battle is a straight fight between the two combatants. It would be the exact opposite of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, where both the national parties had been reduced to fringe players, sandwiched between the Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP). #
Of the two, the Gujarat elections will be critical for both players, as they will be able to test their relative strengths ahead of the big national elections that could come in earlier than usual if the nuclear deal ends in a rupture between the UPA and the Left.
Whoever wins, Gujarat will be in contention for heading the next coalition at the centre, and whoever loses will have a tough time finding allies in the other states.
The individual players with the biggest stakes in the Gujarat elections will be chief minister Narendra Modi and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is widely expected to lead the party’s campaign in the state.
For Modi, the battle is do-or-die. He will be fighting not only the Congress party, but also rivals and enemies within his own party.
Within the state, senior leaders like Keshubhai Patel are ranged against him. At the national level, many senior leaders are worried about his larger than life image. In effect, the Gujarat election is about Modi. It’s him versus the rest.
If Modi wins big, he will be able to position himself as the tallest leader within the BJP, rivalling the old warhorses Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani.
If Rahul wins, he will have established himself as the rising son in a party that is anyway enamoured of family leaders. He will then wipe the stain of defeat after leading the Uttar Pradesh Congress to defeat in the last Assembly elections.
Gopalaswami said poll dates in Himachal Pradesh have been slightly advanced on account of the weather. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 23 in Gujarat and on December 28 in Himachal.
The term of the 182-member Gujarat assembly in Gujarat expires on December 26 and the 68-member Himachal Pradesh house on March 9 next year.
The 2008 calendar will be crowded with 10 assembly elections. Barring some north-eastern states, the battle will be largely between the BJP and the Congress.
The key states going to the polls in 2008 are Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland. Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram are the other states that go to the polls.
Leader of the opposition LK Advani, at a recent meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had observed that recent developments, including the Ram Setu issue, had brought back the two principal national parties back to centrestage, despite them being on opposite sides of the fence. The Prime Minister is said to have nodded in agreement.
The Gujarat polls have a special political significance for both the BJP and the Congress.
While the BJP is seeking to return to power for a third consecutive time in the state, it will also be Modi’s acid test, especially after his controversial win in the last Assembly elections, where the electorate was communally polarised in the wake of the Godhra train fire and subsequent communal riots.
Unlike last time, Modi may this time be fighting on the development and governance platform, though the Ram Setu issue could inject an element of Hindutva politics into the campaigning.
For the Congress, there could not be better battle-ground to push its secular credentials. With Rahul Gandhi widely tipped to lead the poll battle, he will have another chance to test the durability of the Nehru-Gandhi charisma.
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