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Modi & Shah wrest their hometowns from Congress, lotus blooms again in Gujarat’s Unjha & Mansa

Dubbed as prestige battle, Kiritkumar Keshavlal Patel & JS Patel ensure double delight for BJP. A first-time candidate, Kiritkumar records win margin of 51,000-plus votes in Unjha.

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New Delhi: In the 2017 Gujarat assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a humiliating blow when it lost to the the Congress in Unjha constituency, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hometown Vadnagar falls. Adding insult to injury, it also lost in Mansa, where the party’s chief strategist Amit Shah is from.

Cut to 2022 and the party salvaged its pride in both these constituencies. BJP’s Kiritkumar Keshavlal Patel, a first-time candidate, won with a margin of 51,468 votes in Unjha. In Mansa, BJP’s J.S. Patel won with a margin of 39,266 votes.

Both constituencies represented a prestige battle of sorts for the Modi-Shah duo, who have made the BJP an impregnable electoral machine across the country but had to suffer losses in the constituencies they were born or raised in.

In 2017, Congress candidate Asha Patel won the Unjha seat by a margin of over 19,000 votes against the BJP’s Narayanbhai Patel, the sitting MLA since 1995. Asha Patel later defected to the BJP (she passed away last December) but the loss still stung.

As for Mansa, it had registered a loss for the BJP since 2012, despite being the home turf of the party’s so-called “election machine” Amit Shah, and where members of his extended family still live.

What seems to have worked out this time for the BJP is a well thought-out change of strategy in both these constituencies.


Also Read: After 2017 embarrassment, Gujarat BJP banks on a Bhagwat confidant to win Modi’s home ground


RSS factor in Unjha 

BJP candidate from Unjha, Kiritkumar ‘Kiritbhai’ Keshavlal Patel, who made his electoral debut this year, secured 88,561 votes while Congress’s Arvind Amratlal Patel got 37,093 votes. The Aam Aadmi Party’s Urvish Patel came third with 18,461 votes.

An old RSS hand, 67-year-old Kiritbhai, a civil engineer who runs a school and college for underprivileged girls in the district, is a trustee of Gujarat state’s Vidya Bharati, RSS’s education wing. Patel is also a member of the Saraswati Shishu Mandir, a network of private schools run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Fielding Patel ensured that the RSS rank and file had put its might behind him to ensure that the 2017 rout does not get repeated. In 2017, BJP lost Unjha to Congress by over 19,000 votes.

Victory after 10 years in Mansa

Since 2012, the BJP has been losing the Mansa Assembly seat, which is part of the Mehsana Parliamentary constituency, to the Congress. What made the party’s two Assembly election losses here even more remarkable was that Mansa used to be a BJP stronghold, where the party had won consecutively between 1995 and 2007.

That is why the victory from Mansa will be doubly sweet. BJP’s J.S. Patel secured 98,144 vote. Congress’s Babujisinhji Thakor got 58,878 votes. Patel is from the Patidar community and in the construction business, while the Congress candidate is a Thakor from the transport industry.

(Edited by V. S. Chandrasekar)


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