Gujarat Congress goes for tribal outreach blitz to regain lost electoral foothold
The campaign, led by newly appointed CLP chief Tushar Chaudhary, aims to reclaim the party's foothold among tribals in south and central parts of the state
Eyeing a long-awaited electoral revival in Gujarat, the Congress party plans to aggressively court the state’s over 15 per cent tribal population concentrated in districts spread across the state’s central and southern regions.
With newly appointed Congress Legislative Party (CLP) chief and tribal leader Tushar Chaudhary at the helm, the outreach campaign is expected to complement the party’s ongoing efforts at wooing the state’s Dalits and backward castes.
Wooing tribals back
Though details of the outreach campaign are yet to be finalised, The Federal has learnt that the Congress’ plan to revive its foothold among tribals will be rolled out from south Gujarat before it extends to central Gujarat.
The two regions of the state account for 24 of the state’s 27 assembly seats that are reserved for scheduled tribes, with south Gujarat alone accounting for 14 such seats. The remaining three ST reserved seats are spread across north Gujarat’s Aravalli, Banaskantha and Sabarkantha districts.
Signs of the Congress’ bid to wrest the tribal vote it gradually lost to the BJP since the mid-1990s were visible, when Chaudhary, one of only two tribal MLAs of the party in Gujarat, was appointed the CLP chief last month. A few days later, the All India Congress Committee had also announced new District Congress Chiefs (DCC) for the state as part of the 'Sanghathan Srijan Abhiyan' (organisation building campaign) that the party’s former national president Rahul Gandhi had launched from Ahmedabad in April.
Of the 40-odd new DCC chiefs, 13 belong to various tribal groups.
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Chaudhary, a former Union minister and son of late Amarsinh Chaudhary, the only tribal to have ever been Gujarat’s chief minister, told The Federal that the new DCC chiefs “have been asked to develop a local teams, comprising 8 to 10 members, in every taluka”. These teams will be responsible for collecting political, electoral and social feedback from the grassroots, which they would relay to the DCC chiefs for further action.
Tushar Chaudhary poses before a large-size photograph of his father and former CM late Amarsinh Chaudhary
“We aim to create a robust cadre from the ground up,” Chaudhary pointed out.
Lure of Hindutva
The Congress believes that it began to lose its grip on the state’s tribal pockets because of the sustained campaign by the RSS-BJP combine to “impose Hindutva on tribal culture and faith”.
Beginning in 1995, when the BJP came to power in the state (it has continued to hold power ever since), tribal pockets of Gujarat began moving en masse to the saffron side, much like the rest of the state.
The extent to which the BJP now commands control over the state’s tribal belt can be gauged from the fact that even in the 2017 assembly polls, when the Congress registered its best performance since 1995 with 77 seats against the ruling party’s 99 seats, it was able to wrest only five of the 27 ST reserved seats.
In the 2022 Assembly polls, the Congress got another major jolt with the massive surge in AAP’s vote share; a substantial chunk of which came from the tribal-dominated regions of south and central Gujarat.
Saffronising tribals
The three-way split in tribal votes in the state in 2022, helped the BJP wrest 23 of Gujarat’s 27 ST reserved assembly seats; with the Congress tally sliding to just three ST seats (its overall tally was a paltry 17 seats against the BJP’s 156 seats in the 182-member House). Though the AAP managed to wrest just one ST reserved seat in that election, it finished second in as many as 18 tribal-reserved constituencies.
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The Congress, however, seems to believe that it can recoup its losses from 2022 and that its principal rival for tribal votes remains the BJP.
As such, for its upcoming tribal outreach, the Congress wants to counter the saffron front by highlighting how the Adivasi-dominated areas of south and central Gujarat have continued to lag behind in development and other socio-economic indices while the community’s traditions and customs have also been gradually overrun by Hindutva.
“The RSS and its many sister organisations have infiltrated tribal society and replaced our nature worshiping rituals with their idol worship. We will fight against saffronisation of our tribal culture,” said Chaudhary, who represents the Khedbrahma assembly segment of north Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district. However, he has previously been an MLA from the Vyara seat in south Gujarat’s Tapi district and also an MP from south Gujarat’s Mandvi (constituency scrapped in 2008) and Bardoli Lok Sabha constituencies.
Reviving tribal culture
Among the ideas being explored by the Congress to regain its base among the tribals, said Chaudhary, was to pit the importance of tribal festivals, traditional dance and street performance practices and cultural practices against ‘Hindu’ festivals and customs.
“When Hindus celebrate the month of Shravan and worship Lord Shiva, it is time for Gavri festival for the tribals. It is a 40-day festival marked by tribal street theatre performances and traditional Gujarati dance forms like Bhavai... If the RSS organises Ram Katha in tribal areas, we will organise Bhavai to connect with the tribals,” said Chaudhary.
While Chaudhary may seem to have a plan for reviving the Congress in Gujarat, particularly across the state’s tribal belt, there is, however, a challenge more personal than purely political that awaits him – and by extension, his party. Many Congress members agree that revival among the tribals is crucial for the party’s overall electoral rejuvenation in the state, they wonder if Chaudhary is really cut out for the onerous task.
Lacking political clout
A native of south Gujarat’s Surat, who has the backing of his father Amarsinh Chaudhary's political legacy, Chaudhary has largely been an absentee politician in the state’s grassroots politics among tribals for over two decades. His last electoral stint from south Gujarat’s tribal districts was in 2009 when he won the parliamentary polls from Bardoli. Though he was inducted into the then UPA government as a junior minister for tribal affairs (moved later to the ministry of roads and highways), he remained somewhat detached from Gujarat’s day-to-day politics at the grassroots.
In the 2014 and 2019 polls, Chaudhary tried his luck to return to the Lok Sabha from Bardoli but, like the other 25 Congress candidates in the state, lost on both occasions by massive margins against his BJP rival, Parbhubhai Vasava.
In the 2017 assembly elections, when the Congress saw a surge in both, its seat and vote share, in the state, Chaudhary tried his luck to return to state politics but lost the polls from the Mahuva seat in Surat. When Chaudhary did eventually strike electoral luck, it was from the Khedbrahma seat in north Gujarat’s Sabarkantha in 2022. But the victory was bitter-sweet as the Congress was utterly routed in the state; reduced to just 17 seats with a large chunk of its traditional vote lost to the AAP.
Vansda MLA Anant Patel (left) with Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Gujarat
Hemang Vasava, a former taluka president and local Congress leader from south Gujarat’s Tapi district, believed that while Amarsinh Chaudhary was able to straddle over Patidar and tribal communities alike – the two formidable caste groups in south Gujarat, who also influence the region’s sugar cooperatives sector, his son lacks the same political stature.
“Tushar Chaudhary began his political career under the shadow of his father (Amarsinh Chaudhary) but he moved out of the state (to serve as MP and Union minister) before he could establish his ground as a local tribal leader,” Vasava said, adding that the Congress high command’s decision to appoint Chaudhary as the new CLP chief had “come as a surprise for many of us”.
Tough task
The surprise, unfortunately for Chaudhary, wasn’t a happy one. Vasava admitted that “Congress workers in south Gujarat were disappointed” at the high command’s decision as “Chaudhary was never active as a leader on the ground in the tribal region” and that “people hardly saw him in his constituency”, even when he was a Lok Sabha MP for a decade.
While Chaudhary was rarely seen in south Gujarat, Vasava says leaders like Vansda MLA Anant Patel and former Mandvi MLA Anand Chaudhary “set up a parallel tribal leadership line within the party” by organising massive protests against Vedanta’s zinc smelter and Par-Tapi- Narmada Link projects.
Notably, in March 2024, when Rahul Gandhi travelled across the tribal belt of south Gujarat during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, he met Anant Patel and Sukhram Rathwa, a veteran tribal leader and former CLP chief, but Chaudhary, said sources, “was not invited by the party” to share the stage with Rahul.
Ajay Rathwa, a tribal leader from the Congress’s Valsad unit, also struck a sceptical note when he said that Chaudhary “has been out of touch with local issues of south Gujarat for a very long time” and noted that “it will be a huge task (for Chaudhary) to take back the region from the BJP”.
