•n In February 2008, Sanjay Botad, a tribal, was killed in police firing in Sabarkantha’s Polo forest reserve area. A year later, in Vajepur forest village, which is home to Botad’s widow, all 30 applications for forestland under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, were rejected. It was exactly the same story in neighbouring Antarsuba, where 30 applications claiming rights over forestland were also turned down.

•n Amongst the 52 candidates of the BJP and Congress, the lone Muslim candidate is Aziz Tankarvi, a political novice who is widely regarded as an example of Congress tokenism. The last Muslim MP in Gujarat was elected in 1984 — Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi’s political advisor.

•n On Sunday, Ratilal Vala, a sanitary worker, died due to asphyxiation while he was cleaning a manhole in Gandhinagar. Not a single candidate has met Vala’s family in Gandhinagar, which has elected L K Advani three times in a row.

These disparate instances illustrate the marginalisation of three minority groups — tribals (15 per cent), Muslims (9 per cent) and Dalits (7 per cent) — in the political scheme of Gujarat.

While they constitute 31 per cent of the population together, the political affinities of these three groups have rarely been harnessed into a consolidated power.

Politically, the last time tribals, Muslims and Dalits ever mattered en bloc in Gujarat was in the 1980s, when Congress leader Madhavsinh Solanki formed an alliance — KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim). While this created a strong support base for the Congress, it stopped there.

... contd.