The Gujarat State Election Commission has announced local body elections across the State. A total of 15 Municipal Corporations, 84 Municipalities, 34 District Panchayats, and 260 Taluka Panchayats will go to the polls. Byelections will also be held for 13 seats across 11 Municipalities. Voting is scheduled for April 26, with counting on April 28.

After the summary revision of the electoral rolls, the total number of voters for the 15 Municipal Corporation elections stands at 1,10,39,131. The 84 Municipalities and 13 byelection seats account for 33,99,330 voters, while the 34 District Panchayats and 260 Taluka Panchayats together cover 2,74,82,357 voters. The total eligible electorate for these local body elections is 4,19,20,818—more than 95 per cent of Gujarat’s total voter base of 4,40,30,725.

The BJP has controlled the State’s politics for three decades. The Congress, which has been in opposition since 1995, is now contending with a third force: the AAP. After AAP polled around 14 per cent of the vote in the 2021 local body elections, the State’s political arithmetic—long a two-party contest—shifted. These elections will be the first large-scale test of that shift ahead of the Assembly election likely in December 2027.

The BJP first came to power in Gujarat in 1998, ousting the Congress after decades of the latter’s dominance. Since then, the party has not lost a single Assembly election in the State. The Congress came closest to winning back power in 2017, when it secured 77 seats and over 41 per cent of the vote. In every other election, the party’s performance has been poor.

The roots of the BJP’s dominance are older and more complex than communal polarisation alone. When the Congress ruled Gujarat, its base rested on privileged castes and the Patidar community groups that were politically and financially powerful in pre- and post-Independence Gujarat. After the State was carved out of Bombay on May 1, 1960, the Congress continued to draw on this support.

First rupture

The first rupture came with the Navnirman Andolan of 1974, a student-led movement against corruption and inflation that forced the resignation of the Congress government. The agitation helped both the Socialists and the Jan Sangh—the BJP’s predecessor—make inroads among the urban middle class. To counter this erosion, the Congress devised the KHAM strategy (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim), a caste-based coalition that helped it win the 1985 Assembly election with a massive majority under Madhavsinh Solanki.

But the socio-political upheavals of the late 1980s undid that coalition. The Mandal agitation for reservation created resentment among the privileged castes and Patidars. The BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) seized the opening, using the anti-Mandal sentiment to win over these groups.

“The RSS parivar silently worked among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of Gujarat, especially the SCs. They tried to mobilise them along Hindu religious lines during the Rath Yatra period,” said Sarthak Bagchi, a political researcher based in Ahmedabad. The strategy bore fruit in 1995, when the BJP came to power. It has held the Chief Minister’s office in Gandhinagar since.

The 2002 communal riots further consolidated the Hindu vote behind the BJP and Narendra Modi, who went on to win the 2002, 2007, and 2012 Assembly elections. After Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, a Gujarati asmita (pride) narrative gave the party additional ballast. The 2017 Assembly election was the most difficult test for the BJP in the State: the patidar agitation led by Hardik Patel, combined with challenges from OBC leader Alpesh Thakore and Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani, created a united opposition front. But with the resources of the Central and State governments at its disposal, the BJP under Modi and Amit Shah survived the challenge. The duo has since worked to further tighten the party’s grip on Gujarat’s politics.

The AAP factor and the split in opposition votes

AAP made its first serious move in Gujarat after the 2017 elections, but the real push came after the party won Delhi in 2020 with a second consecutive absolute majority. Arvind Kejriwal began touring the State with increasing frequency. The results showed in the 2021 Municipal Corporation elections, where AAP polled 13.91 per cent.

The Municipal Corporation vote shares over the past three election cycles tell the story:

The BJP’s vote share has remained largely stable across the three elections. What has changed is the distribution of anti-BJP votes. In 2015, the Congress held over 41 per cent; by 2021, its share had dropped to under 27 per cent. AAP’s entry split the opposition vote without denting the BJP’s base.

The same pattern held in the 2022 Assembly election. The BJP won a record 156 seats in the 182-member House. The Congress was reduced to 17, its lowest tally in decades. AAP won five seats in its debut. The BJP polled 52.50 per cent, while the Congress dropped from 41.44 per cent in 2017 to 27.28 per cent. AAP, contesting for the first time, secured 12.92 per cent. Because AAP’s presence damaged the Congress more than the BJP, the party attracted the label of being the BJP’s “B Team”.

“The Congress has been in opposition for 30 years. But even today, the party’s way of functioning is old and dull,” said Bagchi. “It is neither good at the theatrics AAP employs as opposition, nor at setting narratives or giving ideological clarity to voters.” People, he added, see the Congress as directionless and want a new vehicle to express their anti-BJP sentiment.

Congress’s uphill revival and AAP’s growing footprint

The 2024 Lok Sabha election offered the Congress a rare moment of hope. Geniben Thakor, a combative leader from the Thakor community, won the Banaskantha seat in north Gujarat—the party’s first Lok Sabha victory in the State since 2014. Rahul Gandhi declared that the Congress would defeat the BJP in the next Assembly election and has since visited Gujarat repeatedly.

In April 2025, the party held its AICC session in Ahmedabad—the first in Gujarat since the 1961 Bhavnagar session and the sixth in the party’s history in the State. The session, held on the banks of the Sabarmati, announced an organisational overhaul. But on the ground, the revival effort faces steep odds. Five of the 17 MLAs the party won in 2022 have defected to the BJP. The Congress has failed to win a single byelection on any of those five seats. It has no dominant leader, a weakened cadre, and depleted resources.

AAP, meanwhile, has been gaining ground. In June 2025, Gopal Italia—a prominent face of the 2017 Patidar agitation—won the Visavadar Assembly byelection in Saurashtra, a seat at the heart of Patidar politics, defeating the BJP by over 17,000 votes. In south Gujarat’s tribal belt—five districts where the Congress was traditionally strong—AAP’s Chhatar Vasava has been building the party’s presence. According to the 2011 Census, Gujarat’s tribal population is 14.75 per cent.

As the challenge from AAP grows, tensions with the State government have escalated. In early April 2026, Gujarat police detained AAP’s State president Isudan Gadhvi at the Khambhalia police station in Devbhumi Dwarka district. Gadhvi had gone to the police station to seek information about the arrest of AAP workers. He and several other party members were detained for over eight hours before being released on bail. Kejriwal wrote to Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, seeking a meeting and claiming that over 160 AAP workers had been arrested across the State in the preceding three months. “This has been an attempt to cripple our local body elections campaign,” he alleged.

With AAP positioning itself as the principal opposition and the Congress struggling to retain relevance, the local body elections have become a referendum on who will carry the anti-BJP vote. In this charged environment, the Congress’s refrain that AAP is the BJP’s B Team has not gained traction on the ground.

By 2027, the BJP will have been in power in Gujarat for 32 years. States such as Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar have seen the Congress lose power for equally long stretches. In those States, alternative parties rose and consolidated as the Congress receded into irrelevance. A similar dynamic appears to be unfolding in Gujarat with AAP’s rise. The local body elections on April 26 and the Assembly elections in 2027 may be the Congress’s last window to avoid that fate in yet another State.

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