NEW DELHI, Dec 20: The Bharatiya Janata Party kept its hold on Gujarat for the fifth time in a row on Thursday but lost power to the Congress Party in Himachal Pradesh by a whisker thus setting up a keen contest in the general elections widely expected to be called earlier than mid-2014 when they are otherwise due.
By winning a hat trick under his leadership albeit by a reduction of two seats from his last tally of 117, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi took a step closer to staking his claim as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in the next polls. He has the support of key business captains including Ratan Tata and both the Ambani brothers.
In recent months several western countries led by UK have signalled their willingness to work with Mr Modi who was treated as a pariah for his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim violence.
The communal polarisation he engineered helped him firmly win power in Gujarat but it also alienated a host of potential kingmakers and power-brokers both within the BJP and among the smaller regional parties whose support will be crucial for any future Indian government.
Mr Modi’s well-known hatred of Pakistan and his vitriolic campaigns against legal and illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam could set off a series of complications in South Asia’s regional calculations. With his poor credit with Muslims in the region his ascendance to power, not a forgone conclusion though, could seriously impair India’s ability to secure a role in post-2014 Afghanistan.
Possibly sensing the roadblocks, Mr Modi appeared to make some rare contrite comments, saying for the first time that he was sorry if he had made a mistake, which is being seen as a reference to the deaths of over a thousand Muslims in state-sponsored pogroms that lasted for weeks in 2002 February-March. He visited his main BJP rival and now a party dissident Keshubhai Patel, marking a tactical retreat to woo wider support for the next project.
Even by mistake, there should be no mistake in the future, he told his supporters in his victory speech but gave no indications of his future political plans.
When they shouted, “PM, PM”, he said he would be making a visit to Delhi for a day on Dec 27 and whatever he was doing in Gujarat was the service to Mother India.“Neither will I stop, nor will I get tired as I have to fulfil your dreams”, he said.However, Congress extracted a sweet revenge defeating BJP in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh. The party secured a wafer-thin majority of 36 in a House of 68, one more than the half-way mark of 35.
The BJP managed to get only 26 while independents got 5 and Himachal Loktantrik Party one. In the last elections, the BJP got 41 and Congress 23 The BJP campaign of corruption against Congress veteran Virbhadra Singh failed to have any impact while anti-incumbency appeared to have cost the ruling party dear in Himachal Pradesh.