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By-elections for nine assembly seats and one parliamentary seats in Gujarat will be conducted on September 13 along with 24 other assembly and two parliamentary seats across the country. Congress had lost all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat during the general elections.
The assembly seats where the by-polls will be held include Anand, Limkheda (Dahod), Deesa (Banaskantha), Matar (Kheda), Maninagar (Ahmedabad), Talaja (Bhavnagar), Tankara (Rajkot), Khambhalia (Jamnagar) and Mangrol (Junagadh). These seat were vacated after the BJP MLAs from these seats got elected to the Lok Sabha in May this year. The Vadodara Lok Sabha seat also fell vacant after former Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi went on to become the Prime Minister of the country and decided to retain Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
"Development will be our main agenda for the by-elections to be held on September 13. We are going to tell people that we are in power at the centre and electing BJP candidate will give them a advantage of having same party in state and at centre," said BJP spokesperson Vijay Rupani. "We are hopeful of retaining all the nine assembly seats," he added.
Asked about the new leadership in the state under chief minister Anandiben Patel, Rupani said, "Those who doubt the new leadership should see the result of the Junagadh municipal elections where BJP won with a majority." He was pointing towards the state Congress which had questioned Patel's leadership ability within the party.
It was Modi who had recommended the name of Patel as his successor in Gujarat. Patel is the first woman chief minister for the state.
According to BJP sources, party observers are going to visit the assembly seats on August 20-21 were the by-polls are to be held to identify the possible candidate by talking to workers there. "The observers will suggest a list of possible candidate for each of the nine assembly seats and one parliamentary seat to the state parliamentary board on August 22. This list will then be sent to the national parliamentary board for approval of appropriate candidate. The list of candidate is likely by August 23 or 24," he added.
At present, strength of BJP in 182-seat Gujarat assembly is 123 while that of Congress is 55. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has two seat while, JD(U) and independent hold one seat each.
