The Election Commission will announce the schedule for the Gujarat Assembly polls at 12 noon on November 3. The poll panel has convened a press conference to announce the schedule.
The term of the 182-member Gujarat Assembly ends on February 18 next year.
11.40 a.m.
Why was the schedule not announced earlier?
Citing the convention followed in 2017, the poll panel had not announced the Gujarat election schedule when it came out with Himachal Pradesh poll dates last month.
While elections in Himachal Pradesh will be held in a single phase on November 12, the counting of votes will take place on December 8.
By keeping the counting date for Himachal Pradesh nearly a month after the polling, the commission had given a clear hint that votes for Gujarat would also be counted on December 8.
In 2017, the polls in the two States were announced on different dates but the counting took place together on December 18.
11.20 a.m.
Does ‘double engine government’ matter for Gujarat voters?
In Gujarat, the support for the double-engine government has increased from 16% in 2017 to 27% in 2022, and in contrast, opposition to it has plummeted substantially. Even those who are fully dissatisfied with the central government (17%) still choose to support the idea of a double-engine government.
The findings across States in earlier surveys indicated an interesting pattern: wherever the BJP was the incumbent government, it found substantial support for a double-engine government. Voters in Gujarat (27%), Assam (41%), Goa (34%), Uttar Pradesh (31%) and Uttarakhand (33%) show a substantial inclination towards ‘double engine’, whereas in States such as Kerala (54%), Tamil Nadu (40%) and West Bengal (33%), where the ruling dispensation is different, the citizens mostly disagree.
11 a.m.
A State election with national leaders as the face of their parties
In the recent past, the leadership factor has been a key role in determining the success of parties at both central and state level. How critical could the leadership factor be in Gujarat? Given the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went in for a major overhaul in the State of not merely replacing the Chief Minister but much of the Council of Ministers was by itself indicative of how important the party saw the role of its national leadership and party organisation. The rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Gujarat is also seen to revolve around its national leadership.
The Lokniti-CSDS poll indicates some interesting trends on people’s preference for the Chief Minister of the State. In an open-ended question on who they would prefer as the Chief Minister of the State after the next election (there was no prompt for names), there was no clear winner with a sizeable lead or majority. The incumbent Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel had the support of a little over one-sixth of the respondents. One in every ten favoured his predecessor, Vijay Rupani.