The High Stake Game In Gujarat By Deepak Parvatiyar* Ahmedabad: All eyes are on Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, where elections are to be held in two phases on December 9 and 14. Eversince the Bharatiya Janata Party formed its first ever majority government in Gujarat in 1995, it has comfortably won all state assembly elections since then – its lowest tally in the 182-member Gujarat House has never gone below 115 (in 2012). However, even then it became 117 after the Gujarat Parivartan Party (which had 2 MLAs) merged with the BJP. In comparison, the Congress Party crossed the 60 figure only once, (61 in 2012), during this period since 1995. Its downslide continued to an unprecedented level when in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it could not win a single seat while the BJP made history by winning all the 26 Parliament seats from the state. Moreover, in August this year, 13 of its...
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