Gujarat polls: Five of seven billionaire candidates from BJP, 2 from Congress

Rajkot and Patan districts have two each in the Rs 100 cr club, many of whom left school after Class X, while returning billionaire candidates show huge jumps in asset values

From left-Balvantsinh Rajput, Pabubha Manek, Ramesh Tilala, Raghunath Desai, Jawahar Chavda, and Jayanti Patel. (Express)

From two candidates in the 2012 Assembly polls who had assets worth over Rs 100 crores, there are at least seven candidates in the Rs 100 crore-plus club this time, five of them from the BJP. There were seven billionaires in the fray in 2017 too. Read in Gujarati

In Mansa of Gandhinagar, where Congress won in 2017 with a margin of 500-odd votes, BJP has Jayanti Patel, 64, who has immovable and movable assets worth Rs 661.28 crores in total, as declared in his affidavit. This also includes the assets of his spouse, Anandiben Jayantibhai Patel, as well as those held under an Hindu Unified Family (HUF) account. A Class X-pass businessman belonging to the Kadva Patidar caste, Jayanti has declared movable assets worth Rs 147 crores, with the remaining Rs 514 crores as immovable assets. He has also reported liabilities worth Rs 233 crores. The Congress and AAP candidate in this constituency have assets totalling around one crore rupees each.

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Congress turncoat Balvantsinh Rajput, 61, who is contesting from Sidhpur in Patan district on a BJP ticket, where Congress’s Chandanji Thakor had won in 2017 by a handsome margin of 17,000 votes, has declared assets worth Rs 367.89 crores. Rajput, who is a proprietor of the Gokul Group, has reported movable assets worth Rs 266 crores, which includes agricultural and non-agricultural land parcels, a commercial building in Guwahati, Assam that is presently valued at approximately Rs 13.81 crore, along with other commercial spaces in Gujarat, as well as residential buildings and plots. Another Rs 101 crores has been declared as immovable assets.

Rajput, who was the richest candidate in the 2012 elections (declared assets worth Rs 268 crores then), has seen his assets’ worth grow by nearly 40 per cent in the 10 intervening years. He switched from the Congress to the BJP in 2017, and had contested for a Rajya Sabha seat against the Congress’s Ahmed Patel, though the latter won the seat. Rajput had challenged the outcome at the Gujarat High Court, a case that saw no conclusion after Patel’s demise.

In another constituency in Patan—Radhanpur—where Congress’s Alpesh Thakor had won in 2017 (Thakor joined BJP in 2019 and will be contesting this year from Gandhinagar South), the Congress has fielded Raghunath Desai, a builder with assets worth Rs 140 crores. His affidavit reports Rs 6.16 crore in movable assets and an additional Rs 134.44 crores in immovable assets, which includes several agricultural land parcels in Gandhinagar, Patan, Mehsana and Ahmedabad, non-agricultural land parcels in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, commercial plots in Ahmedabad, and residential spaces and apartments in Ahmedabad and Patan. He has also declared liabilities worth Rs 3.25 crores.

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Desai had contested from the Chanasma seat in 2017, but lost. At the time, he had declared assets worth Rs 108 crores.

Rajkot district will also witness two billionaire candidates—the BJP’s Ramesh Tilala from Rajkot South, and the Congress’s Indranil Rajyaguru from Rajkot East.

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Indranil Rajyaguru. (Express)

Tilala, 57, is a school dropout and industrialist. He is also the trustee of the powerful Shree Khodaldham Trust of the Leuva Patel caste, and has declared movable assets worth Rs 16.35 crores, which include those of his spouse, as well as under an HUF account. He has also declared immovable assets worth Rs 156.42 crores, bringing the total to around Rs 172 crores. His immovable assets include agricultural land parcels in Surat and Rajkot, non-agricultural land parcels in Rajkot.

Congress’s Indranil Rajguru, 56, has declared Rs 66.85 crores worth of movable assets and Rs 92.99 crores worth immovable assets, totalling to nearly Rs 160 crores. Movable assets belonging to him and his wife include 16 vehicles, including a BMW car and a BMW bike, an Audi car, a generic jeep, tractors, a Land Rover and a Volkswagen Beetle. He had lost against former CM Vijay Rupani by a margin of over 53,000 votes in 2017.

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BJP’s Dwarka candidate Pabubha Manek, who won the 2017 elections by a margin of over 5,000 votes, has reported immovable and movable assets totalling Rs 115 crores, an increase by 30 per cent from the Rs 88.42 crores he had reported in 2017. In 2012, he had reported assets worth Rs 31.66 crores, indicating he has nearly quadrupled the value of his assets in 10 years.

Jawahar Chavda, 58, the BJP candidate from Manavadar seat in Junagadh, where Congress had won in 2017 with a comfortable margin of over 29,000 votes, has declared movable assets worth Rs 25.49 crores and immovable assets worth Rs 104.66 crores, totalling to Rs 130 crores. His movable assets include five tractors and a Rado watch worth Rs 85,000, while immovable assets include agricultural land parcels, commercial and residential spaces.