The Bharatiya Janta Party suffered its worst-ever defeat in local body polls in Gujarat that saw Congress regain control, especially in the rural areas. While BJP retained all six municipal corporations, Congress wrested 23 out of 31 district panchayats and 113 out of 194 taluka panchayats. This was a big setback for BJP since it had won 30 out of 31 district panchayats and 191 out of 230 taluka panchayats in 2010. The BJP, however, continued to hold on to nagarpalikas, winning 42 out of 56. It had won 49 in previous polls.
The rural-urban divide was most evident as BJP lost district panchayats of Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara, Surat, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar even when it won the municipal corporations in the same cities. Apart from the stir by Patels, who gave a `defeat BJP' call, other factors including anti-incumbency, water for irrigation and minimum support prices added to woes of a party that lacks the Narendra Modi charm. Patidars inflicted a nasty dent in the party strongholds in Saurashtra and North Gujarat.
Rural Gujarat gave a ruthless wake-up call to the party which never lost an election during the Modi rule from 2001 to 2014. Senior ministers from Mehsana failed to salvage BJP in their home ground. Education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama and social justice and empowerment minister Ramanlal Vora suffered embarrassment with BJP routed in Ahmedabad, Sabarkantha and Aravalli. Vijay Rupani, the minister for transport and water supplies, failed to weather the Patidar storm in Rajkot.
BJP's experiment of fielding 500 Muslim candidates failed everywhere except in Una municipality where all its 10 minority community candidates won. In Una, its Muslim candidates gave BJP 35 out of 36 seats. Besides the 10 winners in Una, another Muslim BJP candidate, Sufiya Zaheed Dal won in RMC. In Ahmedabad, all four Muslim BJP candidates for AMC lost in three different Muslim-dominated constituencies, Jamalpur, Behrampura and Maktampura. The party did not field any Muslim candidate in Surat or Vadodara city.
