Gujarat elections 2017: BJP wins trade centres, as GST, demonetisation turn damp squibs for Congress

Southern and Central Gujarat, home to a majority of the Gujarat's business clout voted favourably for the BJP.

BJP is on track to win the Assembly elections in both Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. (File picture)

NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government's roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation was touted to be a major factor in the Gujarat Assembly elections 2017. Apparent anger over these two moves of the Centre were expected to drag the BJP down in major trade centres such as Surat. But when the results came out on Monday, this hardly was the anti-BJP wave that was predicted.

For instance, out of the 17 seats in Surat District, a Congress candidate lead (around 1 pm) in only one seat - Surat East. Apart from a handful of close races, there seemed to be little that went against the BJP.

The BJP led in a majority of the seats in all but one of Gujarat's regions, with the Congress taking the lead in only Saurashtra. Southern and Central Gujarat - home to Surat, Ahmedabad and Vadodara - where a majority of the state's business clout is concentrated voted largely favourably for the BJP.

This trend flies in the face of the logic that was offered in the run-up to the election - Gujarat's powerful trading community are angry over the inconvenience they have faced because of GST and demonetisation, and that they would vote against the BJP en masse.

Rahul Gandhi had taken his shot at these policies, even mocking GST as 'Gabbar Singh Tax'. But that doesn't seem to have cut ice.

However, the full picture on whether such a factor thinned the BJP's vote share in these regions will be clear only at the end of the day. But there seems little impact of this on the end result.

This is not the first state assembly election where opposition parties have tried to drum up support on the basis of discontent and anger against the Modi government's economic policies such as land acquisition, farm loan waiver, GST and demonetisation.

In the assembly elections that have happened since Narendra Modi took the Prime Ministership in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, only two prominent elections have seen the BJP lose in bipolar contests - Bihar in 2015 and Punjab in 2017. Other elections that the BJP lost were states where it either wasn't locked in a direct contest or has never historically been a force - such as Kerala and West Bengal in 2016.