Gujarat Congress in disarray

The Congress party's preparedness in the election campaign in Gujarat is in disarray, compared to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP), with the arrival of most of the top national leaders in the forthcoming poll operation.

The party's image got a battering with a nominated candidate, Nazneen Bastawalla, trying to commit suicide after her name was replaced by a sitting MLA, Farooq Shaikh.

Until the last minute tickets were being distributed, indicating a party that seemed disorganised and disunited.

"How can you judge the party by one incident?" Hasmukh Patel, spokesman of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, asked Gulf News. "Nazneen was a sensitive lady who took some tablets due to a misunderstanding. Now she is okay," he said.

As for the blitzkrieg of BJP leaders landing in Gujarat for the poll campaign compared to just one leader from the Congress, the party president, Sonia Gandhi, Patel remarked: "None of the BJP leaders can in any way be compared to Soniaji."

To him and other Congressmen, Sonia's popularity with the masses was a problem for the BJP, "especially when 12 meetings have been organised for her between December 1 and 10 across Gujarat. Also campaigning will be the popular actor Dilip Kumar and senior leader Arjun Singh along with Congress chief ministers".

In fact, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh will be touring Kutch where the state government has built 5,000 houses for the quake-hit people of Rapar and Anjar, Usha Thakker, senior Congress party leader of Kutch, said from Adipur.

Though the Congress party campaign may seem to be in disarray, a local businessman and social worker, Adil Bagadia, said: "For the first time, we see the Congress putting up a united front and a semblance of a fight. They even seem to be better organised unlike in the past."

He gives credit to the new Congress state president, Shankersinh Vaghela, for stirring Congressmen into action. "He is after all from the same stable as the BJP," he said.

Most state governments are ruled by the Congress party and even in Gujarat, the Congress party has done well in the local municipal elections and won the by-elections to the assembly in two of the constituencies.

"The BJP just cannot afford to lose the elections," he said. "This is especially since the saffron party wants to prove that if the lab test of communal polarisation succeeds in Gujarat, it could be repeated in other states, too."

That is why all the top party leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, Union Ministers Shatrughan Sinha, Sushma Swaraj, BJP leader Arun Jaitley and others will be vigorously campaigning in the state.

For the Muslims, who suffered severely in the communal riots, there is no other alternative but the Congress party, whom they consider lesser of the two evils.

"The minorities want the BJP to go out of power and will therefore come out and vote this time though the voter turnout in the past has always been low. Even if 60 per cent of Muslims vote, it would certainly make a difference in places where the margins vary between 10-15 per cent."

Despite the deep Hindu-Muslim divide in the state, the Congress party can bank on the reality before the people: that the economy is in dire straits due to the riots.

"Business people from the majority community have also been badly affected and the co-operative bank scams have upset hundreds of people whose savings have been lost."

In the Kutch district with six seats, Thakker says the Congress party could be chosen, especially with "Vaghela's dynamic leadership, on the grounds that the BJP has done little to build homes for the quake victims even after two years even though a lot of money has flown into this region".