At least one sitting MLA and four former legislators of the Bharatiya Janata Party have threatened to contest as independents after being denied tickets by the BJP for the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections.
While some of these disgruntled leaders have said that they will take their next course after consulting supporters, former BJP MLA and well-known tribal face of the party Harshad Vasava on Friday declared himself an independent from Nandod seat reserved for Scheduled Tribe candidates. as filed his nomination papers.
Vasava is the president of the Gujarat BJP’s Scheduled Tribes Morcha and represented the erstwhile Rajpipla seat between 2002 and 2007 and again between 2007 and 2012.
Nandod in Narmada district is currently occupied by the Congress. BJP has fielded Dr. Darshan Deshmukh from this seat.
Unhappy with the announcement, Vasava resigned from his post in the BJP and submitted his nomination papers for the Nandod seat on Friday.
Elections to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly will be held in two phases on December 1 and 5. The counting of votes will take place on December 8.
Here there is real BJP and duplicate BJP. We will expose those who have sidelined committed workers and given key positions to newcomers. I have sent my resignation to the party. People of this area know how much work I have done as an MLA between 2002 and 2012.
In neighboring Vadodara district, one sitting and two former BJP MLAs are against the party after being denied tickets.
Madhu Srivastava, a six-time MLA from Waghodia, who has been denied ticket, said he would contest as an independent if his supporters wanted. BJP has fielded Ashwin Patel from this seat.
Another former BJP MLA from Padra seat in Vadodara district, Dinesh Patel alias Dinu Mama, has also said that he will contest as an independent. BJP has given ticket to Chaitanyasinh Zala. Congress is holding this seat.
In Curzon, former BJP MLA Satish Patel is unhappy with the BJP’s decision to repeat sitting MLA Akshay Patel.
Akshay Patel had won this seat in 2017 on a Congress ticket. He joined BJP in 2020 and won the bypolls.
“Everyone knows what Akshay Patel did as an MLA. My supporters and leaders of Curzon’s cooperative sector have asked me to contest this election as an independent also. The party did not consult me before deciding to give ticket to Akshay Patel,” Satish Patel told reporters in Curzon.
“In fact, 80 per cent of the BJP workers and office-bearers had recommended my name during the ‘samajdari’ exercise. But, in the end I was rejected. We would have accepted any other person as a candidate but can never accept BJP worker and local leader Akshay Patel,” he claimed.
State BJP General Secretary Bhargava Bhatt and Minister of State for Home Harsh Sanghvi visited Vadodara on Saturday and met local party workers. Bhatt expressed confidence that the BJP would win all the seats in Vadodara.
“We will convince Dinu Mama not to go ahead with his plans. There’s still room. He has always been with the BJP and we are sure that he will come back. He is yet to file his nomination as an independent.
Speaking on the issue, Sanghvi said, ‘BJP is like a family and all the members of this family are united. We all are one and BJP will win the election with the support of the people. Meanwhile, Arvind Ladani, former BJP MLA from Junagadh’s Keshod seat, announced on Saturday that he would contest as an independent after the party gave ticket to sitting MLA Devbhai Malam.
He said, ‘The people of Keshod are angry because I was not given a ticket by the BJP. People know how much work I have done for Keshod. That’s why along with the people, my supporters have also asked me to fight as an independent. I will file my nomination on 14th November.
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