The BJP’s extensive tribal outreach over the last one year helped it sweep Gujarat’s tribal belt — traditionally Congress bastions — winning 24 of the 27 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.
The Congress, which had won 15 ST seats in Gujarat in 2017, was confined to just two seats — Danta and Khedbrahma. And, if the AAP could corner a near 13 per cent overall vote share in the State then it could do so based on its performance in the tribal belt as it severely cut into the Congress vote bank to corner over 25 per cent votes in many seats like Bhiloda, Vyara, Chota Udaipur and Kaprada.
In fact, it won its lone seat, Dediapada, cornering a whopping 58 per cent votes. The seat was won by AAP’s Chaitar Vasava, a former aide of BTP founder and 7-time MLA Chotu Vasava, who himself was trounced from Jhagadia by the BJP candidate Ritesh Vasava.
The hitherto Congress bastions of the State’s tribal belt, popularly known as ‘Purvpatti’ (Eastern Belt), are spread across three regions of Gujarat from Ambaji in the North to Godhra in Central Gujarat to Umbergaon in the South Gujarat.
Besides a number of rallies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a Gaurav Yatra in the tribal belt, what yielded results was also the Government’s outreach activities by way of announcing observance of tribal icon Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas every year, setting up of tribal freedom fighters’ museums and their statues among others.
In Himachal Pradesh too, despite its loss the BJP did significantly well winning one (Bharmour) of the three ST seats and bagging two of the four seats with considerable population of the Hatti community whom it had accorded the ST status just ahead of the polls accepting their 60 year old demand.