New Delhi: In the end as the BJP just about managed to get a simple majority in Gujarat and maintained its winning streak in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one thing seemed clear that the twin strikes of demonetisation and roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) managed to reduce the saffron party’s dream of winning 150 seats to a meagre 99 seats. While the BJP seems to have won in urban areas, it is the rural areas where demonetisation and GST have affected its prospects.
Sensing the anger prevailing among the Patidar dominated textile traders of Surat after the GST roll out, the last minute tinkering with the rates seemed to have helped the BJP sweep 15 out of the 16 seats in Surat assembly segment. However, considering the fact that the party was aiming to take its 2012 election tally of 117 to 150 seats, but fell well short by not even touching the 100 seat mark, clearly shows that in the rural areas the demon of demonetisation seems to have hit it badly.
Saurashtra and Kutch regions helped the Congress gain in the state and take its tally to 77 from the 2012 total of 61 seats.
While the trading community overcame its anger against the BJP over GST rollout and voted overwhelmingly for it in major urban centres of Gujarat namely Ahmedabad, Surat and Rajkot.
However it became amply clear that in rural and tribal belts of Kutch and Saurashtra, the Congress managed to drive in home the fact that demonetisation was anti-poor and that it hurt their small savings.
The urban populace does not seem to have been affected by demonetisation and experts pointed out that the pinch of the exercise was felt only for two months between November 2016 and January 2017. Once the 500 and 2,000 denomination notes came into circulation, the pain vanished, they said. Also it is more than a year since demonetisation happened, therefore the Congress could not take advantage of the issue in urban centres.
Yet with the rural populace still feeling the pain of the note ban exercise, it managed to mitigate BJP’s overall electoral gains in the state and whatever benefits it reaped in urban areas, were lost in rual belts. This ultimately reflected in its total tally of 99 seats.
