Gujarat BJP faces tough challenge in post-Modi era

It is seems all is not going well for the Bhartiya Janata Party in Gujarat post Narendra Modi era. Chief Minister Anandiben Patel may be making every possible effort to keep the state away from its attracting eyeballs for bad reasons but the state in the past four months has witnessed something that it had hardly seen in the past one decade.

The leadership in Gujarat must brainstorm over what possibly has went wrong in the state. The state has seen a fresh round of communal violence and the BJP lost three assembly seats to rival Congress whom the former had decimated badly in the Lok Sabha polls.

Communal violence grips Vadodara

Communal violence had erupted in Yakutpura, Panjrapole, Fatehpura and Kumbharvada area of Vadodara city on Thursday after some alleged derogatory posts about a religion were put on social networking site Facebook. Vadodara was Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency which he vacated to retain Varanasi Lok Sabha seat.

Police have arrested over 200 people in connection with the case. But, an incident of such a kind happening in the prime minister's stronghold also brings the law and order situation in the city under question.

Matter becomes tense with the fact that the state of Gujarat didn't witness any major riots, post 2002 Godhara riots, under chief minister Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi, in his chief ministership had a firm control over law and order situation in the state. This also shows that CM Anandiben Patel has not been able to handle the law and order situation so well.

BJP loses by-polls in Gujarat

Barely four months after its clean sweep in Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat, BJP on suffered a setback losing three of the nine Assembly seats to Congress in bypolls but retained Vadodara Lok Sabha seat vacated by Narendra Modi by an impressive margin.

Down in the dumps in the State where it could not open its account in Lok Saba elections as BJP clinched all 26 constituencies, Congress surprised its saffron rival wresting Dessa, Mangrol and Khambalia Assembly seats. BJP retained Maninagar, Tankara, Talaja, Anand, Kheda and Limkheda.

This loss shows that something terribly wrong went with the Gujarat BJP which not has a stable government in the state but also has former Gujarat CM as country's Prime Minister. Despite, Narendra Modi's presence at the centre and party's state unit going gaga over Gujarat's pride leading the nation, a badly bruised and battered Congress managed to secure three assembly seats vacated by BJP MLAs, who were promoted to the Lok Sabha.

Time for introspection

Hence, the party needs to introspect over what went wrong with in a period of just three months that the people had to change the mandate? Even in its maiden budget, the Narendra Modi government had announced a slew of measures to appease the people of Gujarat, including the first bullet train corridor between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, but seems that too didn't help the state government make a clean sweep in the by elections.

Also, the state leadership must realise that Narendra Modi is no more going to be the face of Gujarat.