In an indication of the strong anti-incumbency and anger that many of its MLAs are facing in Gujarat, the BJP while announcing 160 candidates for Gujarat on Thursday morning, decided to drop a staggering 38 sitting MLAs which included outgoing Assembly Speaker Nimaben Acharya, Cabinet Ministers Pradip Parmar, Rajendra Trivedi, Bhupendra Singh Chudasama, Pardeep Singh Jadeja, Nitin Patel and former CM Vijay Rupani.
Many of these leaders had announced before the ticket list was made public that they had ‘opted out’ of the election. However, it was more a case of the party giving them a graceful exit as they had become hugely unpopular in their respective constituencies. The BJP has been in power in the state for 27 years now.
The 160 list includes as many as 14 female, 13 SC candidates and 24 ST candidates. No Muslim candidate was given a ticket in the first list. Sixty nine sitting MLAs were given the renomination.
Those who have found a place in the list include seven Congress turncoats that includes Patidar agitation leader Hardik Patel. Riva Ba Jadeja, wife of Indian cricketer, Ravindra Jadeja will be contesting her first election from Jamnagar West.
Gujarat chief minister, Bhupendra Patel will contest the coming assembly elections from his old constituency, Ghatlodiya in Ahmedabad. In place of Rupani, Patel’s predecessor, a pathologist, Dr Darshita Desai has been fielded from Rajkot West. In Rajkot district, all the four sitting party MLAs have been replaced by freshers.
The Morbi bridge disaster too has made an impact on the list. Sitting MLA and panchayati raj minister, Brijesh Merja, has been dropped and has been replaced by a former Congress MLA, Kanti Lal Amrutya, who had jumped into Machchu River to rescue trapped visitors.
At a joint press conference in Delhi,BJP state president CR Patil, party general secretary Tarun Chugh and union ministers, Bhupendar Yadav and Mansukh Mandaviya released the list containing 160 names.
Apart from the old foe Congress, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi described as a party that was doing its campaign ‘silently, the BJP is facing the much vocal Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is working to repeat what it did in Punjab.