Gujarat 'Tsu-Namo': As Congress cowers, Kejriwal will nibble away at Opposition unity before 2024 Lok Sabha polls

The Gujarat elections have thrown up yet another historic victory for the BJP. PM Modi’s popularity is at an all-time high for he is the one to have delivered his home state to his party once more. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have broken ground in another state where they were hitherto non-existent. These are the most obvious takeaways of the Gujarat Assembly polls 2022.

But this Gujarat election must also be considered to extrapolate the trajectory of Indian politics in the coming future.

First and foremost, the Bharat Jodo Yatra, far from having any effect on the Gujarat electorate, has had an adverse effect on the already dwindling votebank of the Congress. Evidently, erstwhile Congress supporters assumed while queuing up to vote at booths that Rahul Gandhi had abdicated any Congress claim on Gujarat since his yatra did not ‘dare’ enter the poll-bound state.

Secondly, since the Congress, as projected by Firstpost even before the state went to polls, has been decimated, it has also lost all moral claim to being the face of a united Opposition, if at all the latter comes together to contest BJP’s now almost-complete hegemony in 2024. While leaders such as Mamata Banerjee and Bihar stalwart Nitish Kumar were anyway wary of the idea of rallying around any Rahul Gandhi-led combination, their own claims stand rather tall.

Add to this muddle the factor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and you will get the third significant pointer to Indian politics. AAP could not remotely threaten the BJP much against the lofty claims before the polls, it has taken the Congress to the bin. It has majorly eaten into the Congress votebank in Gujarat and proved yet again the near-universal maxim that Congress is the third choice in a tripartite contest in the states.

Firstpost has also got AAP’s number of seats and voteshare right.

It can be safely, assumed, therefore, that the AAP may perhaps be going in the right direction: it wants to replace the Congress, at least, in north India. This strategy, perhaps, has informed Kejriwal masquerading as the prime challenger to the BJP; he has also decided not to attack PM Modi personally anymore; and AAP has increasingly desisted from taking an anti-Hindu and openly pro-Muslim stance, unlike the Congress. Put simply, AAP has now decided to play for the 80 and not the 20 of the Indian electorate, which is already quite crowded.

Finally, the Gujarat poll results are not good news for the Opposition in yet another not-so-obvious way that will play out in the near future. Now, Gujarat results coupled with victory in Punjab, Arvind Kejriwal would want to project himself as the face of a united Opposition before 2024, if at all anti-BJP parties decided to come together, which makes things difficult for the likes of Nitish, Mamata, KCR and Sharad Pawar. In effect, the Congress ship running aground in Gujarat has claimed Opposition unity as its first and foremost casualty.

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