Gujarat Elections will depend on the Patel’s this time.

So if one is following Hardik Patel’s rallies, then Patel votes in Gujrat are not there for granted for BJP this time.  Patel’s were once the most loyal votebank of BJP,Patel’s make up 12-14 per cent of the state’s population, they were a major factor for the BJP’s major victory in Gujrat in the 1990s.

Gujarat Phase One Elections: Voting goes on!

This time nobody is too sure about which way would the Patel vote swing. Will they give in to Hardik’s pleas to not vote for BJP or will they just throng his rallies to just see him? Can Hardik Patel’s agitation really overturn BJP’s power dreams?

Let’s take a look into the 2012 results which might offer some clues on the impact of any shift in the Patel vote that could happen in the Gujarat election results 2017.

Is the Patel view point too overrated or can it actually ruin BJP’s dream of power?

The Patels happen to be the most well established constituencies in which the population is more than 9 per cent in northern and southern part of Gujarat. These constituencies are largely comprised of diamond and textile hubs, which were a part of BJP bastions especially in the 2012 Gujarat elections.

In southern part of Gujarat, BJP had won 28 seats in the constituencies with a big number of Patel population. Out of which, it won 24 seats in , Valsad, Surat,Anand, Bharuch, Navsari which made it a winning margin of more than 10 per cent. It had won three seats with a winning margin of around 5-10 per cent and one with the margin of even less than 10 per cent.  Surely, Hardik Patel had received an unconquested support from the Patel community here, especially in Surat, but with saffron so deeply engraved in Gujarat, as less as a 10% shift in the Patel votes to Congress deosn’t seem to affect BJP mu