Gandhinagar: More than 95% of the state’s voters will exercise their franchise in the local body elections on Sunday, a poll that will gauge the mood of voters in Gujarat before the next general election less than two years from now. While the BJP holds a stranglehold over the civic bodies going to polls, opposition parties are looking to make gains in both urban and rural local bodies.Voting will take place from 7 am to 6 pm in 15 municipal corporations. Nine of them — Navsari, Gandhidham, Morbi, Vapi, Anand, Nadiad, Mehsana, Porbandar and Surendranagar — are going to polls for the first time, along with 84 municipalities, 34 district panchayats, and 260 taluka panchayats. Counting of votes will be taken up on April 28. In total, 10,005 seats are at stake, including 9,992 regular seats and 13 byelection seats. Out of 4.40 crore voters in the state, about 4.19 crore are eligible to vote. Even before polling, the BJP has already won 731 seats unopposed.The BJP, which literally swept the local body elections of 2021, will be looking to repeat its dominant performance five years later. It had bagged all the six municipal corporations, 81 municipalities, 32 district panchayats and 231 taluka panchayats where elections were held.The saffron party built its campaign strategy around various development schemes and projects announced and implemented, even as Gujarat is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah – the biggest talismans of the party.“The elections on Sunday are polls for development. They are a referendum on PM Modi’s politics of development, which is being taken forward by CM Bhupendra Patel. Let us vote for politics of development to fulfil the goal of a developed India by 2047,” state BJP president Jagdish Vishwakarma said on Saturday.The Congress campaign for the polls was preceded by state wide `Jan Aakrosh Yatras’. It raised the issues of the plight of farmers, shortage of teachers and classrooms in the education system, corruption in welfare schemes like MNREGA, and unemployment among youth. “We have promised accountable and transparent governance and inclusive development for all sections of the society. People of Gujarat will vote for change,” Chavda told reporters on Saturday.The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the third political force in the state, has fielded about 5,000 candidates in the elections. It is looking to consolidate on its performance in the last civic body polls, where it picked up a few seats in local bodies, especially in the Surat Municipal Corporation. State party president Isudan Gadhvi alleged, “The BJP is scared of AAP’s growing popularity, because of which cases were filed against AAP leaders during campaigning and the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the state unit of the party were suspended on Saturday.“
