29-year-old Malti Maheshwari, who comes from a Dalit background, will contest against Congress’ Kishor Pingol, also a Dalit leader, in Gandhidham seat.
Winding up her campaign, just a day before the first phase of the Gujarat assembly polls, BJP’s youngest candidate, Malti Maheshwari, seemed confident of her victory.
“Here the mentality is such, whoever the candidate may be, people will first see the lotus, then Narendra Modi and cast their vote. Gandhidham is an A + constituency for the BJP. It is an assured victory,” said 29-year-old Maheshwari, a debutant in the legislative assembly election.
Gandhidham, part of the Kutch district, will go to polls Saturday. The constituency with more than 2.7 lakh voters has a majority Hindu population and nearly 65,000 Dalit voters. The seat has been a BJP stronghold with the party having defeated the Congress in the 2012 election with a margin of 21,313 votes. The constituency is also home to Gujarat’s landmark Kandla Port.
Local leaders were, however, upset with the party’s choice of nominating her as Gandhidham’s candidate over sitting legislator 49-year-old Ramesh Maheshwari, her uncle.
A number of the party’s councillors in Gandhidham, the taluka panchayat president and local leaders protested at the party’s Kutch headquarters in Bhuj against Malti Maheshwari’s nomination.
Downplaying the protests, she said, “Nobody actually resigned, and only one or two offered to resign. They weren’t against me as such.”
“The protests were only because our sitting legislator was very popular among people and the party cadre. But Rameshbhai has been campaigning with me, and all is fine now,” she added.
She hopes the popularity of her father, Ramji Geda, also a BJP leader, will nullify the effect of any resentment among the party cadre. “In so many elections, my father was almost nominated for the seat, but it would never go through. Today, people see me as a daughter fulfilling her father’s dream,” said Maheshwari, who joined BJP in 2009 and has been a councillor since 2015.
Maheshwari, who comes from a Dalit background, will contest against Congress’ Kishor Pingol, also a Dalit leader.
“The Dalit samaj may be divided as there are two leaders contesting, but otherwise all over, the flavour is completely BJP,” said Maheshwari whose husband works as an engineer in the Kandla Port Trust.