If Sanjiv Bhatt has till date been famous for taking on themight of Narendra Modi on his alleged complicity in the 2002 Godhra riots, thesuspended IPS officer might have taken the first step in shredding his ownfame.
By letting his wife Shweta be the Congress candidate againstthe Gujarat chief minister in the Assembly elections, Bhatt has done himselfthe biggest disfavour a man in uniform can do: make public his politicalallegiance.
From now, as the BJP was quick to point out, Bhatt would beseen as a Congress man. Make no doubt about that.
Quick off the block, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekarsaid, “In the last 10 years, they (Congress) carried out a hate campaign....They defamed Gujarat to the hilt, and Sanjiv Bhatt became a major pawn in thehands of Congress."
And now, Javadekar added, "It is clear which forces areworking behind Sanjiv Bhatt, after his wife became a Congress candidate."
While the Congress, according to all estimates and experts’opinion, has little chance on ground to catch Modi off guard on his home turf ”Modi had won the Maninagar seat by 87,161 votes in 2007; no mean featconsidering the runner-up, Congress union minister Dinsha Patel, polled 52,407votes ” it is difficult to gauge exactly what the party, and the Bhatts,expects to achieve out of this tussle.
There could be four reasons, between the Congress and theBhatt couple, why Shweta Bhatt agreed to be the Congress nominee:
1. Shock and surprise Modi by making public the decision onthe last day of filing nominations.
2. Use Sanjiv Bhatt’s plucky anti-Modi stance and image torally all anti-Modi, anti-BJP and fence-sitters to the Congress fold.
3. Dent Modi’s victory margin to score a political point.
4. None of the above, the decision being an emotional andspur-of-the-moment one.
That the Congress won the Maninagar seat last in 1985 saysenough about the fortress the Ahmedabad locality has become for the saffronparty. Modi’s twin victories from the seat have made it a few notches more so,according to all ground-level indications. In such a situation, what sympathyShweta Bhatt can generate among the constituents is best left to scriptwriterspenning episodes of mystery serials.
The best bet for the Bhatt couple and the Congress to effectbits and pieces of hypotheses 3 and 4 was to let Shweta Bhatt be an Independentcandidate with the Congress declaring support for her. That would have ensuredrallying around Sanjiv Bhatt’s supporters and fence-sitters at one go. It wouldhave kept the suspended cop’s apolitical and anti-Modi image impact, andtogether with Congress votes, caused a dent in Modi’s margin of victory.
Remember: only 60.93 percent of the constituency’s 3,29,428eligible voters had cast their votes in 2007. And given the fact thatCongress’s Dinsha Patel polled an impressive 14,151 votes more than CongressmanYatin Oza’s 38,256 votes in 2002, it only means the fence-sitters did what theword suggests: they were sitting on the fence ” undecided, back home.
Fence-sitters being an awfully stubborn, confused orsworn-to-ideology and-impartiality lot, they would have bit the Shweta Bhattbullet better had she been an independent candidate. In Congress camp, she isunlikely to get many of them to her fold.
"Fighting against Modi is the logical step in our questfor democracy and to curb anti-democratic forces," Shweta Bhatt had saidin the morning, before filing her nominations.
She might have taken that step but it could well be anantithesis of the “logical step” she wants everyone in Maninagar, Ahmedabad andGujarat to take.
in association with Governance Now
