New Delhi
As the BJP on Thursday registered a record performance in Gujarat to storm back to power for the seventh straight time, tribals played a key role in it. The BJP’s dominance in the tribal belt was such that it won 24 of the total 27 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, decimating the Congress in the process.
The hitherto Congress bastions of the State’s tribal belt, popularly known as ‘Purvpatti’ (Eastern Belt), are spread across three regions of Gujarat from Ambaji in the North to Godhra in Central Gujarat to Umbergaon in the South Gujarat.
If the BJP’s extensive tribal outreach over the last one year helped it sweep Gujarat’s tribal belt, then the AAP eating into the Congress votebank with a decent outing in the region too had a part in the saffron party’s never-before showing.
In Himachal Pradesh too, despite its loss the BJP did significantly well winning one (Bharmour) of the three ST seats and bagging two (Paonta Sahib and Pachhad) of the four seats with considerable population of the Hatti community whom it had accorded the ST status just ahead of the polls accepting their 60 year old demand.
The Congress won the Kinnaur and Lahaul & Spiti ST seats besides Shillai and Shri Renukaji seats with considerable Hatti population.
The Congress, which had won 15 ST seats in Gujarat in 2017, was confined to just two seats – Danta and Khedbrahma. If the AAP could corner a near 13 percent overall vote share in the State then it could do so based on its performance in the tribal belt as it severely cut into the Congress vote bank to corner over 25 percent votes in many seats like Bhiloda, Vyara, Chota Udaipur, Limkheda and Kaprada.
In fact, AAP won its lone seat, Dediapada, cornering a whopping 58 percent votes. The seat was won by AAP’s Chaitar Vasava, a former aide of BTP founder and 7-time MLA Chotu Vasava, who himself was trounced from Jhagadia by the BJP candidate Ritesh Vasava.
Besides a number of rallies in tribal seats like Dahod by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a Gaurav Yatra in the tribal belt, what yielded results was also the Government’s outreach activities by way of announcing observance of tribal icon Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas every year, setting up of tribal freedom fighters’ museums and their statues besides such initiatives as renaming of railway station after tribal heroes among others.
Tribals constitute 15 percent of the population in Gujarat and are largely spread across 14 eastern districts of the state.
By canceling the Damanganga-Par-Tapi-Narmada River Linking Project owing to protest by the tribals , the BJP negated any adverse impact it could have had in the tribal-dominated areas in South Gujarat.
Ahead of the polls, the Prime Minister had also reached out to the tribal community of Gujarat by unveiling a slew of developmental projects in the tribal belt, highlighting his Government’s
