 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. You all would have seen by now that BJP is leading in both Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Let's look at the figures. BJP is leading at almost 105 seats in Gujarat, while Congress is at 71 seats. Others are having lead on six seats. Congress is somewhere around 41 percent vote share and BJP somewhere around 49 percent vote share. Now let's look at the 2012 results. BJP had 115 seats in 2012 while Congress had 61 seats. After defection, BJP had somewhere around 122 seats in Gujarat as most of the Congress MLAs had shifted to BJP. Let's look at Himachal Pradesh now. Congress was in government in Himachal Pradesh with 36 seats in 2012, and 26 seats were to BJP. In 2017, the trends have reversed. Forty-two seats have gone to BJP. They're leading on 42 seats while Congress is on 22 seats. Left has made its entry in Himachal Pradesh assembly with one seat, others on three. The vote share is somewhere similar, which is 48.7 percent for BJP and 41.7 percent for Congress. Now if we look at the election campaign that was followed in Gujarat, it showed clear desperation for BJP. Modi was all talking about Pakistan, was abusing his opponents, and was talking about the issues of nationalism. The issues of the people were missing from the campaign. Results are visible that there is no Modi wave in Gujarat. BJP is losing its ground while Congress has gained. In a way, it's an honorable defeat for Congress, which has revived. If we look at Himachal Pradesh, Congress is clearly facing anti-incumbency while BJP is gaining grounds. The early trends show that even the CM candidate was trailing, now he's leading. When it comes to Gujarat, Jignesh Mivani, an independent candidate, is leading by a huge margin, and I think he would have won by now. To discuss these elections, we are joined by Tari Conver, senior journalist of NewsClick, who has covered extensively the Gujarat elections, and Tikender Singh Pawar, former Deputy Mayor of Shimla, and a member of CPIM. So welcome to NewsClick, both of you. Thank you. To start with Gujarat, Jignesh Mivani is losing, is winning, sorry. BJP had shown massive sign of desperation. People's issues were completely missing. Communism was their only agenda. And still, they have not been able to gain the target that they had set. What do you have to say about it? First of all, Pranjal Jignesh has already registered victory. He won by a huge margin of more than 18,000 votes. And second thing is, you are right in saying that people's issue took back bench in their entire election campaign in Gujarat. We broke the story that initially there was a campaign going on. In the name of Hajj versus Ram. Ram, right. Hajj stands for Hardik Kalpesh and Jignesh. And Ram was Rupani, Amisha and Modi. So people were given a poster whom do you want to vote to favor. Either Hajj or Ram. So, and in the last phase of the election, campaigning, we saw the entire political discourse changed. So it actually looked like that communism was the only last resort that BJP had. And this is the only agenda that they are going to follow. Exactly. Exactly. In the last phase of election campaigning there, Modi brought the issue of Pakistan and every non-issue who said what Manish Shankar's IR said and what Renuka Chaudhary said and all political rhetoric. There was no words on development, demonetization, GST. And you can say that the BJP tried to play on people's emotion. Modi tried himself to connect with the Gujarati Asmita which I guess to a large extent has worked in favor of the BJP which is leading in most of the seats, not most of the seats which is in position to form the government there. So actually if you look at the economy of Gujarat, it looked like due to demonetization and GST, the rural economy and also the traders community was most hate. So what role did that play? If we analyze the rural votes, Congress has enroled very well there. When we went to rural areas of Saurashti, North and South Gujarat rural areas where the farming community is staying, the main cash crop there is cotton and wheat. People were complaining about the lower rate of their agricultural produce. They were telling Rs. 700 to Rs. 800. Rs. 700 to Rs. 800 they are getting for 20 kg of cotton which is much lower than what they spend for production. So this anger was very visible and it has gone in the favor of Congress. But this position of Congress, although Congress is in a good position now, the Gujarat Assembly will be in an aggressive position. There will be no government like that which the Gujarat government has seen since the last 22 years. But the mistakes made by Congress, I feel that Congress failed to consolidate the anger on the ground completely. They failed to, you can say that the voters have not been able to get that anger and this was their biggest failure. So this lack of association because Bhajpa has an association with the National Assembly which is campaigning at home. And this was also very visible in the whole campaign. Mr. Rupani is saying that if Bhajpa loses in Gujarat then Pakistan will be destroyed. So this is a straight line of RSS. What was the lack of association with Congress? If we analyze the lack of association with Congress then there is no association with Congress in Gujarat. In fact, in other states as well, there is no association with Congress. There is a commitment, a worker's commitment towards the party which was absent completely. And on the other hand, when the polling was going on in the second phase, most of the Congress's leaders I spoke to were slipping on the polling day. So generally, a trend has been seen that if there is a lot of voter turnout in an election then we analyze it in such a way that there is a vote against anti-encompassion. But the situation here was not like that. Here the voter turnout was decreasing and BJP tried their best to get the poll on the polling booth of BJP's committed voters. Congress failed here although they did a very good and aggressive campaign and the wave was in their favor but it was not able to convert it into a vote. This is what I felt saying the entire trend so far. We have seen a lot of movements in Gujarat since last year. There has been a movement of youth. It is about Jignesh, Alpege or Hardik. Jignesh's elections have also been won. The party leader of these youth, OVC, Dalit what is their role in this election? Because if this would have been a consolidated vote then Congress would have been in such a big way. But the performance is good but maybe they are making it a government. If we look at the party-dominated youth by seats then every movement from where the party-agitation started if we look there then the Ujjha constituency of Vardnagar in which Vardnagar comes Vardnagar PM Modi's home ground where PM Modi was born then Vardnagar is considered their constituency although it is in the Maesana district but after the delimitation of 2008 Vardnagar came into the Ujha constituency. In Ujha, BJP lost. Leaving one seat, the seven seats of Maesana they are leaving one or two seats and leading Congress. So the party-dominated youth has benefited the Congress. A new thing that we have seen which BJP was discrediting and which our analysts have discredited these three new faces they have established themselves as a leader. Alpash is leading. Jignesh has won. Hardik has played a very important role in this and we have seen in every party-dominated pocket so Congress is leading there. The failure of Congress in the BJP strategy BJP has been very successful in the last minute of BJP's strategy that when the OBC voters were unable to subside the party-dominated anger they shifted their strategy and they started working with the OBC voters saying that when the party-dominated power comes and the party-dominated reservation will be given your share will be cut BJP was not successful in this too so their last resort was the tribal vote bank which they consolidated in favor of and that's why we can see that BJP is leading in every tribal vote. We will come back to you again on the issue of Jignesh. So congratulations first of all for gaining one seat in Himachal Pradesh and left has made its entry into the assembly. How do you see that victory what impact will it have? How do I see that victory is actually when we coined the slogan in Himachal what is the agenda that we're going to take to the people so our slogan was of a real opposition because what we emphatically campaigned in the elections was that both BJP and Congress happens to be two sides of the same coin I mean they don't represent an opposition at all and actually if you see by last 15 or 20 years what they've been doing in the assembly is not on people's issues the debate but how to increase their wages, salaries that really clicked. So the real role of the opposition how that role of the opposition has to be played we get that slogan. So the CPM is not going to form a government because we were contesting some 20 seats and the CPM also doesn't want a situation whereby it is because of CPM that a government gets formed and our slogan was very concrete that we want a representation and someone who actually represents the voice of the opposition the way Modi is trying to decimate the entire opposition in the country so that really clicked in the minds and how do I see that? How do I see that? I think the candidate who is one Rakesh Singha also has earlier represented the Shimla urban constituency so there are lots of hope and lots of aspiration amongst the people who will be representing the issues of the people. For example the course if you just understand how the state of Himachal has developed probably it's one of the best left of center development that is taking place after Kerala though it was Congress for a long time that played that role right from 1970s to 1990s but yes then after 1990s what we call the post neoliberal era and that also speaks about why no party has been able to win after the 1990s every 5 years people just remove them off so that speaks about the real issues of development and why the development could take place from 1970s to 90s and post 1990s why the governments were incapacitated to perform and it was also part of the structural adjustment that took place from the center and that has really affected important sectors like health education and so who will champion those issues who will champion those causes for example health is becoming one of the largest agendas to intervene similarly education because we have one of even in the remotest place we'll find the schools so what we call we have the hardware but the software slowly slowly got missing like you have an ambulance in the village but you won't have a driver to drive that ambulance so I think those aspirations and land has of late become a pivotal issue for example in Himachal 70% of the land is owned by the forest I don't want to go into those details and so the land that people own the forest tribal act has hardly been implemented so people own that land and they've been owning it for decades together but all of a sudden the government terms them as encroachers so we really fought that movement and it is in this region of Shimla where we have been able to win so how do I see is I think a real opposition coming up maybe just because of one and there are few independence also also looks like that the left is emerging as the third major force in Himachal Pradesh I can say the left has always been that probably the left owns that responsibility I mean because we have a very strong students movement and it span Himachal so every nook and corner of the state you'll find some presence of the left and fortunately we don't have any third party third party of any sort in Himachal so that space can be and slowly slowly is being utilized by the left let's come back to the results so is it merely anti-incumbency against the congress or BJP was properly able to take its agenda to the people you see if you understand how BJP was able to they did it very smartly by the way the BJP because initially they brought the Modi narrative to the fore and then they realized hey Modi narrative is going to get defeated can you believe the party that said no we will never declare a chief ministeral candidate all of a sudden in between said no because they realized Modi is going to be defeated so this Modi narrative of development because there is a Himachal narrative of development and the kind of narrative that they were trying to build the Modi narrative of development was not clicking at all I mean people said we don't want that Modi narrative of development especially after demonetization after GST the way the business community was responding so they were very clever that they brought a chief ministeral candidate in the in the form of Dhumal who is a statesman undoubtedly and who is also representing a large community of the Rajputs so they were in a fix that they will target I mean they will keep that ambiguity and slowly they'll and then that's how they do it the way they did it in Uttar Pradesh or Uttarakhand or Haryana so they couldn't do that because they realized that Modi narrative is not going to work so it's the people's narrative and let us focus not on the pan-Indian issues but only on the issues of anti-incumbency of Congress so and they were able to so what what impact will it have BJP coming back to power in Himachal Pradesh impact in Himachal or all India Himachal see A BJP is not seen a very pro-Himachal party because when Himachal was formed we didn't have a BJP at that time it was Jansang and Jansang used to coin slogans like Statehood, Marothood very good they never wanted Himachal to be carved out of Punjab so I mean they are considered to be more anti-Himachal stuff and I don't know how they will really frame their entire discourse now and how would they decide to govern the state but going by the logic we have a debt of 40,000 crores and we have a neoliberal framework in which the parties work because for example Congress tried to intervene and was even able to put it in the manifesto that no outsourcing will take place so probably the impact would be this would enhance that pace enhancement of more outsourcing because Himachal is probably one of the states where we have the largest per capita human resource engagement in government services largest per capita nowhere in the country not even Kerala for that matter any other state so that is going to I think be hit more which means it will affect the common people more in the sense it will affect the services of health education because it will amount to more outsourcing more privatization and of course the previous government the previous BJP government was considered to be a land mafia so I don't know how how they will reincarnate how they will reincarnate themselves and what kind of metamorphosis will take place you never know but yes that is how they have been branded but never have they have been like pro-state that pro-Himachal kind of stuff so I think it will be a challenge but for the left it will be a golden opportunity because given the reality that if it is BJP the left bring more carters to the streets and if you have an elected representative I think they couldn't have been a better opportunity than what is now Tariq this would be my last question in Gujarat BJP is coming back again with what kind of independent candidate like Jignesh Mewani is going to Vidhan Sabha with a big margin what will be the impact on the politics of Gujarat if we look at the impact positively it can be said that Gujarat is now trying to go ahead with the bi-polar politics of Congress versus BJP not only Jignesh Congress could not check this Congress is doing a lot of trades you will see that third or second candidate is an independent candidate and high number of votes on many constituencies they are getting more than 20,000 votes this was also a strategy especially this is on the trend of party seats where Congress is trailing there independent candidate is gaining a lot of votes so this was another strategy to corner Congress Congress could not check and it proves that the people of Gujarat their electorate this bi-polar politics is trying to bring candidates as a new alternative and this is a challenge for the government see this is one of the options so beware thanks a lot for giving us your time as we have seen and as both of our panellists have told that there is no Modi wave either in Gujarat or in Himachal Pradesh even in Himachal Pradesh they had to declare a CM candidate because Modi didn't want to appear so the feminism is the last resort that BJP has that is what it followed in Himachal Pradesh that is what it followed in Gujarat let's see what happens the final results are yet not out will be coming back to you with the final results at 5 o'clock keep following our facebook page for more updates thank you