Keen contest likely in Kheda

Constituency Watch

The Kheda parliamentary constituency in central Gujarat will be one which will be keenly observed and contested by both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. The contest between Congress stalwart Dinsha Patel and BJP candidate Shubhangini Raje Gaekwad is interesting for more than one reason.

Less than 48 hours before the Congress renominated him to the seat, there were talks of Dinsha Patel joining the BJP. On the other hand, Shubhangini Raje Gaekwad, a member of the Vadodara royal family, was nominated by the BJP to the seat just a day after she joined the party.

The logic behind the two parties nominating the respective candidates is clear. While the Congress could not have sought a better candidate than Patel, the most familiar face of the cash-rich Leuva Patels of Kheda and central Gujarat, the BJP is looking to encash on the lineage of Shubhangini Raje. Kheda borders the Vadodara constituency and a few parts of the Kheda district were under the princely state of Baroda.

But B K Gadhvi, the GPCC president, thinks otherwise. "Dinsha Patel will win this time too and will retain the set with an even more comfortable margin. He has served the people for a decade, while Shubhangini Raje Gaekwad has not done any service in the constituency. We respect her as a queen, but Nadiad was never a part of the princely Baroda state," the GPCC chief said.

While Dinsha Patel is a veteran politician with a highly successful political career, Shubhangini Gaekwad is contesting the Kheda seat that is just adjacent to the Vadodara seat, but has lost the single Lok Sabha election that she contested as an independent from Vadodara in 1996.

Incidentally, Satyajit Gaekwad of the Congress (who has been nominated from Vadodara) had won then.

Dinsha Patel rose to prominence in Central Gujarat when he wrested the Kheda Parliamentary constituency seat in the 1996 from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Since then, Patel has held on to the seat in the subsequent parliamentary elections of 1998 and 1999. In the last general elections in 1999, Dinsha Patel defeated BJP candidate Prabhatsinh Chauhan of the Bharatiya Janata Party, with a margin of over 30,000 votes despite a BJP wave in the state. While Patel polled 2,58,024 votes, his nearest rival of the BJP polled 2,24,307 votes, thus scoring a victory margin of 33,717 votes.

On the other hand, although Shubhangini Raje Gaekwad has not made it to the Lok Sabha even once, she made an impressive debut eight years ago. As an independent, contesting the Vadodara Parliamentary seat in 1996, Shubhangini Raje polled 23 per cent of the votes. She has however remained aloof from politics since that defeat. The constituency therefore will see the organisation of the BJP pitted against the solid political work done by the Congress.