Poll season not over in Gujarat as 9 MLAs win

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Poll season not over in Gujarat as 9 MLAs win

The nine include Chief Minister Narendra Modi, two ministers and six MLAs.

By Mahesh Trivedi

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Published: Mon 19 May 2014, 10:27 AM

Last updated: Fri 3 Apr 2015, 5:52 PM

Unfazed by the humiliating defeat of all their candidates in the just-concluded Lok Sabha (LS) elections in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat, leaders of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have rolled up their sleeves to fight the upcoming by-elections to as many as nine seats in the state legislative assembly.

After all, the battle of ballots, indeed, will continue in the state as all the nine legislators fielded by the BJP in the LS elections have emerged triumphant and will resign soon, forcing by-polls in a couple of months. The nine include Chief Minister Narendra Modi, two ministers and six MLAs.

Besides Modi, who is an MLA from Maninagar in Ahmedabad, other lawmakers who will vacate their assembly seats are Liladhar Vaghela (minister Deesa), Jaswant Bhabhor (minister Limkheda), Devusinh Chauhan (Matar), Rajesh Chudasama (Mangrol), Poonam Madam (Jamkhambhalia), Bharti Shiyal (Talaja), Mohan Kundaria (Tankara) and Dilip Patel (Anand).

At present, after the victory of four BJP legislators in the recent assembly by-elections held with LS polls, the saffron party has the strength of 123 MLAs in the 182-member House but after the resignation of nine members, it will be reduced to 114 members.

Again, Lok Sabha by-polls for one seat will also have to be held in Gujarat if Modi, who had contested from Vadodara and Varanasi decides to retain his politically more significant seat in Uttar Pradesh.

No wonder, the Congress and the AAP have already started preparations for a mini round (nine assembly seats) of ballot-box battle. Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhwadia on Saturday dissolved the party units in four major cities where its candidates had been defeated by huge margins.

He told Khaleej Times that it was necessary to do a restructuring of all the committees of these cities as Congress candidates were defeated by margins ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 votes.

The AAP’s Gujarat convener Sukhdev Patel is also contemplating reorganising the state committee. The fledgling party had fielded 24 candidates Lok Sabha polls and had contested all seven assembly by-elections in Gujarat but all of them lost their deposits. Patel said his party’s not-so-experienced contestants were hamstrung by lack of funds and time but would do better in the soon-to-be-held assembly by-polls.

mahesh@khaleejtimes.com


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