Gujarat elections: In Khambhalia, Isudan Gadhvi’s main challenge is breaking Ahir grip

Isudan Gadhvi will be up against senior Congress leader and incumbent MLA Vikram Madam and BJP veteran Mulu Bera. The rivalry between Madam and Bera dates back almost three decades and the two are set for a showdown after 20 years.

Gadhvi is from the village of Pipaliya in Khambhalia taluka but his electoral debut is unlikely to be an easy affair as a non-Ahir candidate last won the constituency in 1967. In that election, Swatantra Party DV Barai who belonged to the Lohana community defeated then incumbent Congress MLA Harilal Nakum who hailed from the Sathvara community.

The dominance of Ahirs began in 1972 when Independent candidate Hemant Madam defeated Nakum. Madam’s daughter Poonam Maadam is the current BJP MP from Jamnagar. Hemant Madam went on to win the seat three more times as an Independent — 1975, 1980, and 1985. The Congress managed to win back Khambhalia only in 1990 when Hemant Madam was not in the fray and the BJP contested from the constituency for the first time.

Hemant Madam died in 1993 and the BJP, on the ascendancy in Gujarat, won the constituency for the first time in 1995 when Jesa Goria defeated Ranmal. The BJP maintained a tight grip over the seat for the next two decades, winning the Assembly polls in 1998, 2002, 2007, and 2012. But what did not change was that the winners from the BJP and their main rivals from the Congress were Ahirs.

The 2012 Assembly polls also marked the return of the Madam clan as Poonam won her debut election by defeating Ebha Karmur of the Congress.

Poonam’s entry into electoral politics came at a time when her uncle Vikram Madam was already an established political figure. Vikram, whose father Arjan was Hemant Madam’s younger brother, joined the Congress in 1995 and made his electoral debut in 1998 from Bhanvad. But he lost to Mulu Bera, then the incumbent BJP MLA. The tables turned four years later when Vikram defeated Bera, who was then a minister in the Narendra Modi government. Vikram went on to win the Lok Sabha election from Jamnagar in 2004 and 2009. His niece brought his run to an end in 2014.

But, Poonam’s election to the Lok Sabha gave an opening to the Congress in Khambhalia. In the 2014 Assembly bypoll, the Congress’s Meraman Goriya defeated Bera. After spending four years on the sidelines, Vikram Madam contested the 2017 Assembly election from the seat and defeated the BJP’s Karu Chavda, a two-time MLA from the seat. It was the first Congress victory in Khambhaliya in a general election after 1990.

Both Congress and BJP leaders said that Ahir voters play a crucial role in the seat. “After Bhanvad was delimited in 2012, Ahir voters from that seat were grouped with those in Khambhalia. Therefore, they became even stronger. Any party that wants to win this seat has to give a ticket to an Ahir,” said a BJP leader from Saurashtra.

But Vikram Madam disagreed and said electoral success in Khambhaliya does not depend on only Ahir voters. “More than two lakh votes belong to other communities. I am not a leader of the Ahir community alone. Not more than 57 per cent of the electorate from my community vote, and yet I got a total of around 80,000 votes in 2017. This was evidence that voters from all communities voted for me,” said the 64-year-old Congress MLA.

According to the Congress leader, there are 3.02 lakh voters in Khambhaliya, of whom 52,000 are Ahirs. They are followed by Muslims (41,000), Sathvaras (21,000), Dalits (18,000) and Gadhvis (15,000). Both Sathvaras and Gadhvis are also OBCs.

For 57-year-old Bera, too, this will be a tough test as this will be his first election since the 2014 bypoll loss. Bera was the chairperson of the Gujarat Rural Housing Board till around a year ago.

Vikram Madam conceded that Isudan’s entry had made his task more difficult. “Educated people know that freebies being promised by the AAP are not sustainable. But those who are not educated may get swayed by the allure of free electricity etc. Thus, I am going to lose some votes and that makes my task more difficult. But no election is an easy election for a Congressman in the Modi era. I have been fighting against the money and muscle power of the BJP for the past 15 years. But that said, even Indira Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have lost elections, showing nothing is guaranteed in elections.”

Also read in Gujarati: Click Here