Contesting his first Assembly elections, Sandip Desai, the BJP candidate from Surat's Choryasi seat won by a whopping margin of 1.86 lakh votes—only second to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel's victory margin of 1.92 lakhs votes from Ghatlodia. Desai also bettered BJP's 2017 poll margin from the seat when Jankhana Patel had won by 1.10 lakh votes. While Desai got 2,36,033 votes, AAP candidate Prakash Contractor became a distant second with 49,615 votes and Congress's Kantilal Patel polled just 25,840 votes. Even though the party replaced Jankhana—a Koli MLA—with Desai, an Anavil Brahmin, a sizable number of Koli Patel voters in Choryasi chose to back the new face. Desai resigned as the Surat district BJP president prior to filing his nomination papers from the seat. Desai is considered close to Gujarat BJP president CR Paatil. Apart from the Koli Patel community, Choryasi also has a number of migrant voters from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's public meeting in the area was attended by a large number of migrants. Desai is also the vice-president of Surat district cooperative bank, SUMUL Dairy director, and the vice-president of the Surat Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC). Earlier, he was the general secretary of Surat BJP. An Arts graduate from MTB College of Surat, he has also been involved in farming activities. The seat, which has over 5.66 lakh electors, witnessed 56.18 per cent voter turnout. Twelve candidates, including three independent candidates, were in the poll fray from the seat. “This is the first election of my life and I have been given big responsibility by the party as they had changed sitting MLA Jankhana Patel who later supported me in the campaign. I am thankful to the people of my constituency who have given me so much love and respect,” Desai told The Indian Express.
