NEWS
VIEWS
INTERVIEWS
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES '98
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
POLLING BOOTH
INDIA SPEAKS!
YEH HAI INDIA
CHAT
ELECTIONS '96

Vaghela, Modi fight proxy war in Dhandhuka

Dhandhuka is perhaps the fiercest electoral battleground in Gujarat. This where Rashtriya Janata Party president Shankarsinh Vaghela and Bharatiya Janata Party strongman Narendra Modi are fighting a proxy war in this rural assembly constituency through their respective proteges, Chief Minister Dilip Parikh and Bharat Pandya.

Polling for the 26 Lok Sabha and 182 Vidhan Sabha seats in Gujarat, including Dhandhuka, will be held tomorrow, and counting of votes will be held on March 2. For both Vaghela and Modi, Dhandhuka seems to be a prestige issue. Earlier, the BJP government led by Keshubhai Patel had fallen due to a split in the ruling party following political rivalry between Vaghela and Modi. Dhandhuka offers both the opportunities to demonstrate their actual political clout in the state.

However, for the chief minister, this electoral battle has assumed added importance since he is trying to retain this assembly seat for a third time. Parikh admits that some voters were yet to know that his election symbol (bugle or trumpet) had changed this time. But he is still doing everything in his power to win.

His party is relying mainly on the achievements of the two RJP governments led by Vaghela and Parikh.

Parikh, an industrialist-turned-politician, had won the Dhandhuka assembly seat on BJP tickets in 1990 and 1995 by about 5,000 and 8,000 votes respectively. This time, he was pinning his hopes, like the Congress candidate, Mahendra Sinh Chudasma, mainly on the Dalit, backward and Muslim votes.

Apart from the three main contenders -- the BJP, RJP and the Congress -- he has also to contend with Ajitsinh Chudasma of the Janata Dal. There were also four Independents in the fray.

This is the first election Bharat Pandya, the softspoken media manager of the Gujarat BJP, is fighting but he shows little evidence of his lack of experience. He is a native of Dhandhuka, claiming that a local would nurse the constituency better than an ''outsider'' (Dilip Parikh).

Pandya claims that he alone has visited as many as 94 of the total 97 villages in the Dhandhuka assembly constituency during his poll campaign. The constituency had a total of 143,000 voters, including about 70,000 women.

As elsewhere in Gujarat, water and electricity were the main problems faced by the fast developing area. While Vaghela campaigned for Parikh in the constituency, BJP national general secretaries Sushma Swaraj and Modi canvassed support for Pandya. Former film superstar-turned-politician Rajesh Khanna joined the campaign of the Congress candidate.

UNI

Elections '98

Tell us what you think of this report