Gandhinagar, June 8 (IANS) When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s four Rajya Sabha nominees filed their nomination papers at the Gujarat Legislative Assembly on Monday, the most significant political development was not who entered the contest but who stayed out of it.

For the first time since Gujarat was formed on May 1, 1960, the Congress did not field a candidate for a Rajya Sabha election from the state.

If the BJP’s four candidates are elected as expected, the party will occupy all 11 Rajya Sabha seats allotted to Gujarat, leaving Congress without a single representative from the state in the Upper House of Parliament.

The immediate reason is straightforward arithmetic.

In the 182-member Gujarat Assembly, the BJP currently holds 161 seats, while Congress has been reduced to 12 MLAs.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has four members, and one seat is held by the Samajwadi Party.

A Rajya Sabha candidate requires the support of roughly 37 MLAs to secure an election, making a Congress victory mathematically impossible.

The four BJP nominees, Raju Shukla, Mansinh Parmar, Mukesh Rathwa, and Jitendra Kanzariya, filed nominations in the presence of Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, BJP state president Jagdish Vishwakarma, and senior party leaders.

Yet the significance of the day lies in what it represents for the state unit of Congress.

The party that governed Gujarat for much of the period after Independence and remained a major political force for decades is now on the verge of losing its last foothold in the state’s Rajya Sabha.

That foothold is currently held by Shaktisinh Gohil, whose term expires on June 21. A veteran Congress leader from Bhavnagar district and one of the party’s most recognisable faces in Gujarat politics, Gohil entered the Rajya Sabha in 2020 and subsequently served as Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee president.

Once his term ends, Congress will no longer have a Rajya Sabha member elected from Gujarat.

The decline has been years in the making. Congress won 77 Assembly seats in 2017 and appeared to have revived its fortunes against the BJP. However, the momentum faded rapidly. In the 2022 Assembly election, the party collapsed to just 17 seats.

That result was so poor that Congress failed to secure the minimum 10 per cent of Assembly seats required for recognition as the Leader of the Opposition. The situation worsened through defections.

Among the most prominent leaders to leave Congress in recent years were Hardik Patel, who joined the BJP in 2022, Alpesh Thakor, who crossed over in 2019, and C. J. Chavda, who resigned from Congress and joined the BJP in 2024.

Perhaps the most symbolic departure came from Arjun Modhwadia.

Modhwadia spent nearly four decades in Congress politics, served as Leader of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly, and later headed the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee.

In March 2024, he resigned from Congress and joined the BJP before winning a by-election from Porbandar. He is now the state’s Forest and Environment Minister.

Speaking to IANS after nominations, Modhwadia argued that Congress’s decline stemmed from a long-term erosion of public trust and organisational weakness.

“Congress was first a movement, then it became a political party, and today it is gradually moving towards becoming an NGO,” he said.

According to Modhwadia, the crisis extends beyond electoral setbacks. “This is not just about the Rajya Sabha election. Earlier, in the 2022 Assembly elections, Congress failed to secure the minimum 10 per cent seats required for recognition as the principal opposition party. It needed 19 seats but won only 17. Of those 17, only 12 MLAs remain now,” he said.

He also criticised what he described as excessive centralisation within the party.

“No successful political party is run from Delhi. A political party functions from the district, block, and booth levels,” Modhwadia said.

Congress, however, rejects the BJP’s narrative that the absence of a candidate reflects political irrelevance.

State party chief spokesperson Dr. Manish Doshi told IANS that the party had deliberately decided not to contest because it lacked the numbers to win.

“The Congress did not field a candidate for the Rajya Sabha election from Gujarat because the party believes in democracy and principled decision-making. Since Congress does not currently have the required numerical strength in the Gujarat Assembly, it chose not to contest,” Doshi said.

He argued that the more important question was whether Gujarat would benefit from having all its Rajya Sabha MPs from a single party.

“With all Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat now belonging to the BJP, will Gujarat receive justice?” he asked.

Doshi cited issues including the demand for the Western Railway headquarters in Gujarat, relocation of the Salt Commissioner’s headquarters to the state, and long-standing demands relating to the Narmada project.

The irony for Congress is that the setback comes even as the party has launched one of its most ambitious organisational rebuilding exercises in years.

In April 2025, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, launched the ‘Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan’ in Gujarat, describing it as a grassroots restructuring effort aimed at rebuilding the party at the district, block, and booth levels.

The initiative was part of a broader organisational reform programme championed by the Congress leadership following repeated electoral setbacks.

Reacting to the party’s campaign, Modhwadia said: “Even its own leaders have categorised party workers into three groups: race horses, baarat (wedding procession) horses, and langde (lame) horses. Can party workers ever be compared to horses? These remarks come from the party’s top leadership, which should inspire not only party workers but also the people of the country. Instead, workers are divided into categories, and each worker is made to view others through that lens.”

He further told IANS, “What is more surprising is that these remarks are not new. I have been hearing the same dialogue for the last 15 years. If after 15 years they still cannot identify who their capable leaders are and who is not, then that itself reflects the state of the party.”

Gandhi has repeatedly stressed that Congress must reconnect with people at the grassroots level through organisational work rather than relying on personalities or centralised leadership.

Whether those reforms can reverse Congress’s fortunes remains uncertain.

For now, the Rajya Sabha nominations have provided the starkest illustration yet of the party’s decline in a state where it once dominated politics.

A party that helped shape Gujarat’s political landscape after Independence is now preparing to watch a Rajya Sabha election from the sidelines without a candidate and, soon, without a representative in the Upper House from Gujarat for the first time in the state’s history.

–IANS

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