It’s evening and at the first-floor BJP office in the crowded market in Jetpur, party workers unwind amid the constant ringing of cellphones. The campaign is hurtling on at full speed in this part of Gujarat, which goes to polls in the second phase on December 16. “This time,” says taluka general secretary Alpeshbhai Soni, “Narendrabhai (Modi) is fighting on the plank of vikas (development).” Then he reels off figures of funds released by the Modi Government for development in this tribal-dominated area, most prominently under the ‘Van Bandhu Kalyan Yojana’.

But in Jetpur in Vadodara district, the BJP’s choice of candidate may be more evocative than its rhetoric. The party has denied the ticket to its incumbent MLA, who wrested the Pavi-Jetpur seat for the party in this Congress bastion. The Congress’s Mohansinh Rathwa had been elected MLA since 1971 for seven successive terms before he lost in 2002.

This time, the BJP candidate is a newcomer, Jayantibhai Rathwa. His calling card: he is implicated in several cases of the communal violence in 2002. “Jayantibhai helped the rioters,” says Alpeshbhai. “That’s why he is famous here, for his fight for Hindu dharma”.

The Pavi-Jetpur seat is one of the 15 seats, most of them tribal-dominated, that the BJP won in 2002, the first election after the communal violence that year. Congress and BJP workers, even the man at the tea shop will tell you that this area was awash in a Hindutva wave in 2002. The political fallout of the communal violence is said to have been particularly dramatic in two districts—Panchmahal, in which Godhra is located, and adjoining Vadodara.

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