The Adivasi who could not be defeated | AAP MLA Chaitar Vasava
National parties, including the BJP, may want to coopt him. For now, Chaitar Vasava stands uniquely aloof in Gujarat
In Gujarat’s local body elections, the BJP swept 33 of 34 district panchayats. The one that held out, Narmada, was the handiwork of a 36-year-old Adivasi MLA. He campaigned on bail, was debarred from his own constituency, and had to field two wives to canvass in his place—with 19 FIRs to his name, he was practically left dodging the law, in a manner of speaking. But his aura as a maverick rebel worked for Chaitar Vasava, the Aam Aadmi Party’s legislative party leader. He delivered 15 out of Narmada’s 22 district panchayat seats, and four of its six taluka panchayats. Verdict: Vasava is a figure the BJP cannot neutralise and the Congress cannot reclaim.
In Gujarat’s local body elections, the BJP swept 33 of 34 district panchayats. The one that held out, Narmada, was the handiwork of a 36-year-old Adivasi MLA. He campaigned on bail, was debarred from his own constituency, and had to field two wives to canvass in his place—with 19 FIRs to his name, he was practically left dodging the law, in a manner of speaking. But his aura as a maverick rebel worked for Chaitar Vasava, the Aam Aadmi Party’s legislative party leader. He delivered 15 out of Narmada’s 22 district panchayat seats, and four of its six taluka panchayats. Verdict: Vasava is a figure the BJP cannot neutralise and the Congress cannot reclaim.
In an election dominated by the BJP at almost every tier, central-eastern Gujarat’s Narmada district stood out. The victor is arguably Gujarat’s most combustible politician today. Most of the FIRs Vasava has gathered since 2022—for rioting, assault, extortion, attempt to murder, firing in the air et al—relate to political confrontations or clashes with the administration over the Forest Rights Act. That’s only added to his lustre as the new rising star in the tribal belt.
Even if not in volumes that threaten the status quo fully, Adivasi politics keeps throwing up a kind of independent-minded politics, holding out in an aspect of sullen alienation, that makes both the BJP and Congress distinctly uneasy. Their comfort level increases only with cooption, as seen with their designs on Gujarat’s tribal elder, Chaitar’s one-time mentor Chhotubhai Vasava, founder of the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) and advocate of a separate Bhilistan.
THE IRON BENDS HERE
Now Gujarat has its next Vasava. The BJP may have won about 95 per cent of the 9,682 local body seats it contested in April, and will run all 17 municipal corporations, 79 of 84 municipalities and 34 of 35 district panchayats. Yet, the loss of Narmada carries extra sting: it includes Garudeshwar taluka panchayat, home to the Statue of Unity. The credit, say observers, goes squarely to Vasava, more than to the AAP symbol. Rather, the latter’s street cred here draws substantially from its outspoken tribal leader, not vice versa. It is he who gives flesh and blood to AAP’s appeal as an ‘outsider’ to the system.
The BJP tried both courtship and intimidation with him. Neither has worked so far. Each case it flung at him added to his appeal. Vasava was barred by the high court from entering his constituency as a bail condition until three days before the April 26 polling day. His wives, Shakuntala and Varsha, filled in. The BJP, which has systematically absorbed tribal leaders from the Congress and BTP over the years, found itself outplayed.
A STATE OF DESIRE
Tribal communities form around 14 per cent of Gujarat’s population, concentrated in a contiguous belt along the state’s eastern borders with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. This is terrain Vasava is not just reclaiming, but doing so while making the same point as his mentor does: in November 2024, he launched the Bhil Pradesh Mukti Morcha, reviving the decades-old demand for a separate tribal state carved out of tribal districts in these four states, with the Statue of Unity’s backyard as the proposed capital.
How does this play out within Gujarat? Its 182-member assembly has 27 ST-reserved seats, and tribal voters are influential in at least another 10. A diligent BJP raised its ST tally from nine seats in 2017 to 23 in the 2022 assembly polls. With focused outreach and winning over the Congress’s entrenched tribal veterans, it breached what had been the Grand Old Party’s last bastion.
Yet the belt remains restless, with a lingering sense that Gujarat’s showcase infrastructure masks their erasure. It engenders a politics that resists the present development model, with its hunger for land, low appetite for compensation, not to speak of provision of jobs, education or health, with a quiet sanskritisation proceeding alongside.
The Congress is historically partial to the tribal sentiment and tries to mobilise around it, but lacks a credible, pan-Gujarat tribal face. That is the space Vasava has stepped into, building credibility without aligning with either the ruling side or its predecessor. It’s a perilous, predator-filled course that Adivasi leaders have to navigate.
Chaitar’s public life began over a decade ago under the tutelage of Chhotubhai, a kind of Robin Hood figure in Bharuch. The relationship soured after he was denied a BTP ticket in 2022. The BJP claims he first approached them, and joined AAP only after being turned down. In 2024, he contested Bharuch, a general seat. Speculation over his next move is now a staple of conversations. Will the BJP lure him with a ticket to the Lok Sabha? More to the point, will he be amenable?
