Gujarat: BJP Declares Seven Bypoll Candidates, Names Five Congress Turncoats

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has declared the names of seven candidates for the upcoming bypolls in eight constituencies in Gujarat, scheduled for November 3. Notably, five of the seven names are of former Congress MLAs who had resigned from the assembly and the party ahead of the Rajya Sabha election in June this year. The BJP has decided to field them from the same seats they won as Congress candidates in 2017.

The seven candidates are Pradhyumansinh Jadeja (for Abdasa), Brijesh Merja (for Morbi), J.V. Kakadiya (for Dhari), Atmaram Parmar (for Gadhada), Akshay Patel (for Karjan), Jitubhai Chaudhary (for Kaprada) and Vijay Patel (for Dang).

The party is yet to declare its candidate for the constituency of Limdi in Surendranagar.

In the 2017 assembly elections, the Congress had won all the eight seats. Pradhyumansinh Jadeja had defeated BJP’s Chabil Patel by over 9,000 votes in Abdasa while Brijesh Merja had defeated BJPs Kanti Amurtiya by 3,419 votes in Morbi and party veteran Dilip Sanghani was defeated by then Congress candidate J.V. Kakadiya by over 15,000 votes in Dhari. Akshay Patel had defeated BJP’s Satish Patel by 3,564 votes in Karjan and Jitu Choudhary had defeated BJP’s candidate Madhubhai Raut by only a margin of 170 votes in Kaprada.

The two candidates – Vijay Patel and Atmaram Parmar – who are not Congress turncoats have been fielded by the BJP from Dang and Gadhada respectively. Both lost to Congress candidates in 2017. Patel had won the seat in 2007 as a BJP MLA. However, he lost Dang to Congress’s Mangal Gavit in 2012 and 2017. Parmar, a prominent Dalit face in the BJP and a minister in the Gujarat government, lost Gadhada to Pravin Maru by over 9,000 votes in 2017.

Both Mangal Gavit and Pravin Maru have resigned as Congress MLAs but not joined the BJP yet. Somabhai Patel, the Congress MLA from Limdi who had also resigned, has also not joined the saffron party yet.

According to reports, local leaders and workers from the BJP are disgruntled over the party’s decision to give nominations to Congress turncoats. The disgruntlement of lower rung leaders also comes in view of Congress turncoat MLAs performance in the last bypoll. Alpesh Thakor, Dhavalsinh Zala and Tejashree Patel, who had switched over to the BJP from the Congress, had lost.

However, dissent isn’t the only challenge before the party. C.R. Patil, its newly-appointed party president in Gujarat, faces the challenge of wooing farmers and tribals in primarily rural constituencies, also Congress strongholds.

Farmers have had a particularly bad lockdown. The initial decision to close Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMCs) across the state hit farmers during the harvest season. They were left with no place to sell their harvest. As a result, multiple small-scale farmers, especially those who grew perishable goods, suffered huge losses. Many sold their harvest to private buyers at meagre prices, some even throwing away their produce.

Agriculture is the primary occupation in five of the eight seats, including Gadhada in Botad, a reserved SC seat. Kaprada and Dang are reserved for STs; 35% of its population is Christian. Ganpat Vasava, the minister for tribal development, forests and toursim held a meeting in Dang on October 11 to appeal the locals to vote for the BJP, promising “development” in the area.

This is the first time since the anti-Christian riots in 1998 in the area that the BJP is openly courting Christian votes. On December 25, 1998, right-wing mobs burned down churches, thrashed priests, burned down their homes and killed two evangelists in Dang.

Dang, a district in the south, is one of the least developed districts of Gujarat. Basic amenities like electricity and cooking gas is yet to reach every home in the district. Tribals, who form about 90% of the population of the district, depend on forests and small-scale agriculture for their livelihood. However, a large number migrate to cities in central Gujarat to work in construction and to the south to work in sugarcane fields.

During the lockdown, tribal workers, who form about 90% of the work force among construction workers, were stranded in cities like Ahmedabad after their employers abandoned them. Left without money and food, the workers survived and reached home primarily with help and intervention of activists and NGOs. Members of the community who work in sugarcane fields, however, were forced to work amid the pandemic, flouting all norms of social distancing.

Meanwhile, the Congress announced its five candidates on October 13. The candidature of Jayantilal Patel, a ceramic manufacturer from Morbi, was announced. Patel is also the President of Morbi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He has been a Congress candidate from Morbi, a Patidar-dominated ceramic hub in 1990, 1995, 2002 and 2007 – but lost all the elections.

Doctor Shantilal Sanghani will be the party’s candidate from Abdasa in Kutch. Sanghani is a Patidar and a local doctor who has been the party’s vice-president in Kutch. Mohanbhai Solanki, who has been the Congress’s chairman of the SC Cell of Bhavnagar, has been declared as the candidate for Gadhada. Solanki is a Bhavnagar based builder. Both Solanki and Sanghani will be contesting an election for the first time.

Suresh Kotadiya, son of late union minister Manubhai Kotadiya will contest from Dhari, Amreli. Kotadiya, a resident of a village in Dhari taluka, has served as the chairman of the APMC in Dhari.

The Congress has chosen Kiritsinh Jadeja for Karjan. Jadeja has been a close aide of Akshay Patel, the turncoat MLA from the seat.

The Congress, which had won 77 seats in the Gujarat Assembly Election in 2017, has now been reduced to 65 seats, with 12 MLAs resigning over a period of a year, most of whom have joined the BJP.