Gandhinagar North, Gandhinagar South Gujarat Election 2022: Gandhinagar is one of the strongholds of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some of the party’s tallest leaders like LK Advani, Shankersinh Vaghela and Amit Shah have represented this seat in the Lok Sabha. Advani represented the seat in the lower house from 1991 to 1996 and from 1998 to 2014. In 2014, he vacated the seat for Amit Shah, who is the current MP from Gandhinagar. The saffron party, which has been in power in Gujarat for the past 27 years, has never lost a parliamentary election from Gandhinagar since 1989.
The capital city has two assembly seats by its name – Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. Part of Gandhinagar district, both the assembly seats came into existence after the delimitation exercise in 2008. Gandhinagar North is one of the seven assembly constituencies of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat, while Gandhinagar South comes under the Ahmedabad East parliamentary constituency, which has the same number of assembly seats.
After delimitation, two assembly elections have been held in Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. The BJP won both the elections in Gandhinagar South, but managed to capture the North only in 2012. The party had won Gandhinagar North by over 4,000 votes in the first election, but lost it to the Congress in the 2017 contest. In the last election, CJ Chavda of INC defeated Ashokkumar Ranchodbhai Patel by around 5,000 votes.
In Gandhinagar South, the BJP secured nearly 50 per cent votes in both the contests. This time, the party has fielded Alpesh Thakor, one of the three young leaders who gave a scare to the ruling BJP in 2015 – the year Hardik Patel led the biggest Patidar reservation protest against then chief minister Anandiben Patel. had led.
Alpesh Thakor, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani form the formidable trio that brought the BJP under double digit tally of 99 in 2017 for the first time in its two decades of rule. However, two of these leaders have now joined the saffron party, with only Jignesh Mevani remaining with the Congress.
From Gandhinagar South, Congress has fielded Himanshu Patel while AAP’s candidate is Daulat Patel. Alpesh Thakor was earlier with the Congress, but in July 2019 he joined the BJP. He contested the 2017 assembly elections on a Congress ticket and won Radhanpur by securing 48.23 percent votes. However, he lost the by-election from the same constituency in 2019 to Raghubhai Desai of the Congress.
In Gandhinagar North, BJP’s Ritaben Patel is pitted against Congress’ Virendrasinh Vaghela and AAP’s Mukesh Patel. In the last election, Congress got more than 49 percent votes while BJP got 46 percent votes.
Considering the constituency’s parliamentary legacy, there is a lot at stake for Amit Shah and the BJP in Gandhinagar. The BJP would like to win both the seats to show that it has a firm hold on its traditional stronghold. Gandhinagar North and South will go to polls in the second phase on December 5.
