Turncoats win 4, 1 ‘rebel’ returns: BJP’s tally improves to 161 in Gujarat Assembly, Congress set to fall to 12
Notably, Vav Congress MLA Geniben Thakor has won the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat. With this, Congress's tally in the Assembly will go down to 12 and necessitate a bypoll.
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Party workers celebrate at BJP headquarters in Gandhinagar. (Express Photo by Nirmal Harindran)The BJP on Tuesday emerged victorious in all five Assembly seats where by-elections were held along with the Lok Sabha polls.; The bypolls to Porbandar, Manavadar, Waghodia, Khambhat and Vijapur seats were necessitated after the sitting MLAs — Arjun Modhwadia, Arvind Ladani, Chirag Patel and C J Chavda from the Congress and Independent Dharmendrasinh Vaghela — resigned from the Assembly before joining the BJP, which fielded all the five from the respective seats on May 7.
With these victories, the BJP’s tally in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly has gone up to 161. But the BJP emphasised that the bypolls were not merely about numbers. “The results were not going to affect any change of power in the state. For us, these bypolls were not about increasing BJP tally or decreasing Congress’s strength. Our objective was to have the BJP flag flying in every street and work for the welfare of the people,” BJP state unit vice-president Bharat Boghra told The Indian Express.
Notably, Vav Congress MLA Geniben Thakor has won the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat. With this, Congress’s tally in the Assembly will go down to 12 and necessitate a bypoll.
Modhwadia (69), who changed loyalties to the BJP in March, defeated his former colleague Raju Odedra by a margin of 1,16,808 votes in Porbandar. His winning margin is more than seven times higher than Odedra’s tally of 16,355 votes.
Modhwadia had won Assembly elections from Porbandar in 2002 and 2007 by defeating BJP’s Babu Bokhiria. However, Bokhiria defeated him in 2012 and 2017. In the 2022 election, Modhwadia had again defeated Bokhiria. “The bypoll result turned out to be how I expected. People wanted a change and they knew it would come about only if I switched over to the BJP,” Modhwadia said.
On Congress allegations that he and three other party MLAs who defected to the BJP have committed treason, Modhwadia said, “What else can the Congress say? I changed sides not for some selfish motives. I have never ever felt intimidated by ED, CBI or I-T, neither while Narendra Modi was the chief minister nor during his time as the prime minister. Not even a police constable has paid me a visit ever.”
In Manavadar, BJP’s Arvind Ladani prevailed over Hari Kansagara by a margin of 31,016 votes. Ladani improved his victory margin by over 10 times compared to his margin of 3,453 against BJP’s Jawahar Chavda in 2022.
Chavda, as a Congress candidate, had won the 2017 Assembly elections but defected to the BJP in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He had won the bypoll to Manavadar held simultaneously with Lok Sabha elections in 2019 by defeating Ladani. However, in the 2022 Gujarat polls, Ladani defeated Chavda.
Incidentally, Manavadar and Porbandar Assembly segments are part of the Porbandar Lok Sabha seats. These two segments were the only ones held by the Congress while the remaining five were with the BJP. Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, the BJP’s Porbandar Lok Sabha candidate, got a lead of more than 1.47 lakh votes from the two Assembly segments.
With the loss of Porbandar and Manavadar, the only Congress pocket left in Saurashtra with 48 Assembly segments is Somnath.
In Waghodia, Dharmendrasinh Vaghela won by a margin of 82,108 votes against Congress’s Kanu Gohil. Vaghela polled 72.1 per cent of the votes.
BJP’s Chirag Patel won Khambhat by a margin of 38,328 votes against Congress’s Mahendrasinh Parmar. While Patel polled 88,457 votes with a 56.3 per cent vote share, Parmar polled 50,129 votes (31.91 per cent).
In 2022, Chirag Patel wrested the seat for the Congress from the BJP for the first time since 1990. However, in December 2023, he resigned as an MLA and slammed the Congress’s working style and its stand on the Ram Mandir issue. He was earlier a BJP leader until he switched over to the Congress for a ticket in the 2022 Assembly polls.
In Mehsana district’s Vijapur — the fifth Assembly seat where bypoll was held — BJP’s CJ Chavda defeated his immediate rival, Congress’s Dinesh Patel, by over 56,000 votes.
Chavda had resigned as the Vijapur Congress MLA in January in protest against the party’s stand on issues like the Ram Mandir, surgical strikes, etc. The three-term MLA had also served as the Congress Chip Whip.
In 2017, Chavda won from the Gandhinagar North constituency. In 2022, he fought from Vijapur.
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