BJP releases final list of candidates for prestigious battle of Gujarat Assembly polls

Gandhinagar, November 27: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its sixth and last list of candidates for the prestigious battle of Gujarat Assembly election. The BJP list contains 13 Patidar leaders while dropping of 5 current MLAs, including a minister and former chief minister Anandiben Patel. Monday is also the last day for filing of nominations.

 

With the sixth list, the BJP has announced candidates for all the 182 seats for upcoming Assembly elections. Anandiben Patel’s seat of Ghatlodia constituency is given to Ahmedabad Urban Development authority chairman Bhupendra Patel. Suresh Patel and Rakesh Shah repeated on Maninagar and Ellisbride seats respectively as these both are prestigious seats of Ahmadabad for BJP.

However, Tejashree Patel who joined BJP recently from Congress was given ticket from Viramgaon. Meanwhile, Amit Shah's Naranpurwas ticket was given to senior BJP leader Kaushik Patel. Amit Shah had resigned as MLA after his election to the Rajya Sabha.

Suresh Patel was reinstated at Maninagar seat. Former minister and spokesperson Jaynarayan Vyas will be contesting from Siddhpur, from where he had lost in the 2012 polls. The BJP has dropped Minister Rohit Patel from Anand seat. The other MLAs not given tickets are Nagarji Thakor from Radhanpur, R M Patel from Asarwa and Vinchhia Bhuria from Limkheda.

Earlier, BJP had declared its first list of candidates with 70 names, the second list with 36 names and the third list with 28 names. The fourth list released on November 21 contained only one name that is Piyushbhai Desai has been named as the party's candidate from Navsari. The BJP’s candidates' list also includes Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and Deputy CM Nitin Patel. On November 24, the party announced its fifth list of candidates that included prominent Patidar leaders and a few fresh faces.

Gujarat will decide the fate of BJP and Congress in two phases. The first phase of Gujarat polls will be held on 9 December 2017 for 89 seats while the second phase of voting will be held on 14 December 2017 for remaining 93 seats. Eighty-nine seats of Saurashtra and South Gujarat region are going to polls in the first phase, while the remaining 93 seats in a central and northern region would go for polls in the second phase. Counting of votes will be done on December 18 of this year.

Currently, BJP has 120 legislators in Gujarat assembly, while the opposition Congress has 47 MLAs. While the latter had won 59 seats in the last assembly polls in 2012, a dozen of its legislators had recently left the party with some of them joining the ruling BJP.

Congress has been out of power in the crucial state for over two decades and BJP is seeking to whitewash the Congress yet again in the western state. The term of the 182-member Gujarat Assembly ends on January 22.