The Congress suffered double whammy in Gujarat. The oldest party in India not only lost all 26 seats in the 2014 general elections, but its vote share also gone down terribly low from 43.9 per cent in 2009 lok Sabha elections to 32.9 per cent in the State.
This implausible performance of the BJP also broke the three-decade-old record of the Congress. In the 1984 lok Sabha elections, the Congress captured 24 lok Sabha seats in the State because of sympathy wave, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Even in the case of vote share, the Congress got highest ever vote-share of 54.9 per cent in the 1980 general elections, that record has also been broken due to NaMo wave.
It’s not all about winning all the seats for the BJP, of its 26 candidates 24 won with margin of over 1 lakh. Three candidates including BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Surat candidate Darshana Jardosh and Navsari candidate CR Patil won with margin of more than 5 lakh votes.
“This unprecedented result is due to excellent micro-level planning of the BJP top brass and fantastic execution of strategies at grassroots-level by the BJP cadre,” said a senior BJP leader in Gujarat.
BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi, now the Prime Minister designate fought the election collectively at the State level, keeping the national-level mission 272 in mind. On the contrarily, the Congress looked scattered and its candidates contested on personal strength.
Unlike BJP, much needed craving for victory was lacking in the Gujarat Congress leaders as well as workers. Despite thumping victory across the State, many BJP workers were showing regret for not getting victory margin of 6 lakh vote for Narendra Modi in Vadodara. This is the spirit, which ultimately transformed into a historic triumph for the BJP in Gujarat.
Another factor, which worked in favour of the saffron party was, thousands of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers, who silently worked at ground zero in the State, just like other parts of the country.
Modi himself set an example by winning the Vadodara seat with 5,70,128 votes against All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Madhusudan Mistry. BJP patriarch lal Krishna Advani also won by huge margin of 4,82,534 votes against his Congress rival Kirit Patel from his traditional Gandhinagar constituency.
While congratulating Modi, Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Arjun Modhvadia said that his party humbly accepts the defeat and the mandate given by the people of Gujarat. “In the last one decade, UPA Government empowered common man. We the Congress workers somehow couldn’t able to communicate good work of the Congress-led UPA Government,” said dejected Gujarat Congress chief.
Apart from Mistry, senior Congress leaders including leader of Opposition in Gujarat Assembly Shankersinh Vaghela, AICC secretary Prabha Taviad, Union Ministers Dinsha Patel, Bharatsinh Solanki and Tushar Chaudhary were major casualties for the Congress.