Guj polls: Cong, BJP vote share likely to be depleted

Ahmedabad: The forthcoming Gujarat Assembly elections between two main contenders - the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - are likely to see depletion of their vote shares at the hands of other parties, also having secular and Hindutva leanings.

More than 10 national and regional parties have shown willingness to contest in the Gujarat elections, which has rung alarm bells for poll managers of Congress and BJP as they are likely to become show spoilers in elections, party sources said.

Those who have decided to jump in the election fray are Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, JD(U), NCP, Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan, and Left parties like CPI(M), which may harm the Congress's secular vote. Some of these parties had contested elections last time also.

For the first time in the state, the BJP is facing a situation where the parties sharing same ideology, like the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) floated by rebel leader Keshubhai Patel and Shiv Sena, will also contest the polls.

The other major factor is that elections in Gujarat are being held for the first time after delimitation, where boundaries of more than 60 constituencies out of the total 182 have been re-drawn, sources said.

The delimitation exercise was carried out on the basis of the latest census with an overall view that the population per Assembly seat is in the same range and to identify reserved seats of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The recommendations of the 2002 delimitation commission were approved by the President in 2008.

Both the main political parties are unsure of what will be the outcome of elections in the seats where boundaries have been re-drawn due to demographic and voter profile changes, with respect to caste, following and religion.

In the 2007 elections, more than 20 seats were won or lost by the margin of less than 5,000 votes.

"If the parties like the SP, LJP, JD (U) are terming themselves as secular, to prove that they are truly so they should refrain from doing things which harm secular forces," Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said.

He however, added that the voters of Gujarat have always been comfortable with two party system.