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BJP sweeps Gujarat polls; Congress routed
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GANDHINAGAR: After sweeping all six municipal corporation elections last week, the Bharatiya Janata Party's impressive march continued in rural Gujarat as it claimed 21 of the 24 district panchayats.
The party also claimed 162 of the 208 taluka panchayats, and 41 of the 53 municipalities, elections for which were held on Thursday and results declared on Saturday.
Unable to stop the BJP juggernaut, State Congress president Siddhartha Patel sent in his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, accepting moral responsibility for the party's rout in the local self-government elections, its performance being, perhaps, the worst in the history of Gujarat.
No tampering charge
Unlike in the earlier round of elections, the party did not claim that electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with in favour of the ruling party. Mr. Patel said party workers had fought the elections with zeal and enthusiasm, and that the adverse results were “indigestible.” Accepting “moral responsibility for the party's debacle,” he submitted his resignation to Ms. Gandhi.
The results were worse than those of the 2005 elections when the Congress had claimed six of the 24 district panchayats.
Saturday's results also indicate that the Congress is fast losing ground in its citadel of central Gujarat, as it lost the Anand district panchayat to the BJP after more than a decade, and was also defeated in the Dabhoi municipality, the home Assembly constituency of the Congress State chief.
Last month, the BJP won the Kathlal Assembly by-election for the first time in 50 years, perhaps heralding the downslide of the Congress in the central Gujarat region, which has provided two of the three Ministers of State in the Union Cabinet.
The Rajkot district panchayat, which came under the Congress fold in the last elections after more than decade-and-half, slipped out of its control again though the party had surprised many by winning the Rajkot Lok Sabha seat in the last parliamentary elections.
The whitewash of the Congress was equally pronounced in the elections to the 208 of the 225 taluk panchayats.
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