In first Gujarat list, Cong tackles seats held by top BJP leaders, tough Surat contest

The 43 seats include six whose sitting MLAs are ministers in the outgoing Cabinet.

Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Jagdish Thakor. (File)

In its first list of 43 for the Gujarat elections, the Congress has concentrated on seats held by top BJP leaders currently, with only one constituency (Jhalod) featured in it occupied by a Congress MLA, who has incidentally been dropped.

The list includes Ghatlodia seat in Ahmedabad city, from where former chief minister Anandiben Patel earlier and incumbent CM Bhupendra Patel in 2017 won by huge margins. The Congress has fielded from here Rajya Sabha MP Amee Yagnik, whose term in the Upper House expires in April 2024.

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The 43 seats include six whose sitting MLAs are ministers in the outgoing Cabinet. The Congress first list also includes many former BJP leaders who have crossed over in the past five years. As senior BJP leader Jay Narayan Vyas quit the party Saturday, the Congress list could be a signal to those considering the same.

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The BJP rebels accommodated in the first Congress list include Arvind Ladari (Manavadar seat) and Bholabhai Gohil (Jasdan).

One of the names in the Congress list is Praful Togadia, the cousin of former VHP leader Pravin Togadia. The former Leader of Opposition in the Surat Municipal Corporation, Togadia will contest from Varachha, which is dominated by Patidar voters. Incidentally, last time, the Congress had been forced to drop Togadia as a candidate after the Patidars, who were integral to the party’s better poll performance in the state in 2017, objected to him.

Togadia is staring at the prospect of facing Patidar quota agitation leader Alpesh Katheria, who just joined the Aam Aadmi Party, from Varachha.

While the Congress had got the Patidar support in 2017, since then, AAP has made inroads, and replaced the Congress as the main opposition in the Surat corporation last year. The Congress was reduced to zero in the corporation.

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Another development haunting the Congress is that the two leaders fielded by it from Varachha and another Patidar-dominated seat, Kamrej (both of whom lost), have crossed over to the BJP.

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But the BJP too has a problem in both Varachha and Kamrej, with over 21 of its leaders in Varachha and 36-plus in Kamrej said to be eyeing the ticket from the seats. They include sitting Varchcha MLA Kishor Kanani and his Kamrej counterpart, V D Zalavadiya.

From Jhalod, the only seat that the Congress won in the list of 43, the party has dropped sitting MLA Bhavesh Katara. The son of controversial former BJP MP Babu Katara, Bhavesh had joined the Congress ahead of the 2017 election. Katara’s absence from Congress events since the arrest of his younger brother, Amit, in October last year in an alleged case of murder of BJP leader Hiren Patel, had been an indication of his drifting away from the party.

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In this constituency of Dahod district, the party has fielded former MLA Mitesh Garasiya, a practising doctor.

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The Congress leaders who will take on sitting MLAs who are ministers include Jaishri Patel (Pardi), Sanjay Patel (Raopura), Sanjay Patwa (Surat West), Snehlataben Khant (Morva Hadaf), Kanubhai Kalsariya (Mahuva), and Kalpesh Variya (Katargam).

Apart from these seats, former state Congress president Arjun Modhwadia has been nominated from Porbandar, while Nathabhai Odedara faces a tough contest in neighbouring Kutiyana against multiple-time winner Kandhal Jadeja of the NCP.