The results for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have gone very much as the exit polls predicted. The Congress ‘shock’ did not materialise in Prime Minister rendra Modi’s home State Gujarat, though the BJP has maged to hold on to its citadel with reduced strength of 100 odd seats in the 182-seat assembly. However, this has to be seen in the context of the saffron party ruling Gujarat for 22 years on the trot. This time around the Congress fancied its chances of mounting a credible challenge, banking on the perceived angst of patidars and dalits, as well as traders supposedly hassled by GST. Rather than home-grown Congress leaders, considerable expectation was pinned on the HAJ troika — patidar leader Hardik Patel, OBC leader Alpesh Thakor and dalit leader Jignesh Mewani to deliver for the Congress. Mewani won as a Congress-backed independent candidate, while Thakor emerged victorious on Congress ticket. But the patidar vote was ultimately divided, and the BJP succeeded in making inroads into tribal and Muslim domited constituencies the Congress was eyeing. In fact, fear of patidar consolidation — with the Congress striking a deal with Hardik Patel promising ‘special quota’ to patidars parallel to OBCs — may have led to reverse consolidation of other OBC communities under the BJP banner. To twist the knife in further, the BJP also targeted the trading community by playing on their apprehensions of another KHAM-type (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) social engineering that the Congress had used so potently to domite Gujarat politics during the Eighties. Congress rebel Shankar Singh Waghela too may have caused a significant dent to his former party’s prospects at the hustings. The embarrassment caused to the Congress by Mani Shankar Aiyer’s ‘neech (lowly)’ comment hurled at the Prime Minister, as well as Modi using this ‘insult to Gujarati pride’ to the hilt — is hardly surprising. Along with it, Modi did not forget to tar the Congress with allegation of ‘conspiring’ with Islamabad to bring about a more Pakistan-friendly regime in Gandhigar; this was very much in line with the ‘samshan-kabristan’ remark Modi had made to telling effect in the run-up to Uttar Pradesh polls.