congress-confident-of-win-in-gujarat-by-polls-but-yet-to-declare-candidates

Despite not yet announced its candidates, the Congress remains confident in securing victory in all five vacant assembly seats in Gujarat, which will see bypolls coinciding with the Lok Sabha elections on May 7. 

 

While the ruling BJP has already given tickets to four Congress turncoat MLAs, the opposition party has not yet announced its candidates for the by-polls. cc

 

Though the results of the by-polls will not alter the state assembly power structure as the BJP enjoys a huge majority in the House, the outcome will be crucial for the Congress's future in Gujarat, a state that was once its stronghold and where the party is out of office for nearly three decades now. 

 

The Congress MLAs who resigned were CJ Chavda (Vijapur), Modhwadia (Porbandar), Arvind Ladani (Manavadar) and Chirag Patel (Khambhat). Apart from them, an independent MLA from Vaghodia, Dharmendrasinh Vaghela, also resigned as a legislator and joined the saffron party. 

 

The BJP, which posted a landslide victory in the Gujarat assembly polls held in December 2022, has chosen these five former MLAs to fight the bypolls on the party's symbol from their respective seats. On March 26, an official list declaring them to be BJP candidates for the by-polls to these five seats was issued by the party here. 

 

They all were elected after defeating BJP candidates in the 2022 assembly polls in which the saffron party won 156 of the 182 seats. State Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said the party is confident of winning the bypolls. 

 

"We are confident of winning all these five seats. We will announce candidates for these seats very soon," he said.  The Congress currently has 13 MLAs in Gujarat.

 

In all, six assembly seats are currently vacant in Gujarat. However, the Election Commission has not declared a bypoll on the Visavadar seat because a case about the election of its former MLA Bhupat Bhayani is pending before the Gujarat High Court. Bhayani, who won as the AAP candidate from Visavadar, also resigned in December and later joined the BJP.