Vadodara:
Babar Tadvi, former state minister and Congress MLA from Sankheda constituency in Chhota Udepur district, succumbed to Covid-19 on Wednesday.
Tadvi (80) was admitted to a private hospital in Vadodara after he had complained of fever. Sources said that he passed away after undergoing treatment for four days.
Tadvi, a three-term MLA, had started his career as a school teacher in Vadodara. He contested the Gujarat assembly elections in 1990 on Janata Dal ticket and won with a margin of 9,294 votes. He also served briefly as a minister of state for tribal affairs in Chhabildas Mehta’s government. When the Janata Dal was dissolved in Gujarat, Tadvi joined the Congress party along with other leaders of Janata Dal. During the 1995 polls, he contested on a Congress ticket and won with a margin of 2,496 votes. He repeated the stint in 1998 polls, defeaing the BJP candidate by 3,973 votes.
In 2002, Tadvi was defeated by BJP’s Kanti Tadvi by 35,619 votes. Congress repeated him again in 2007, but Tadvi lost against BJP’s Abhesinh Tadvi. He then briefly joined BJP, but soon got back to Congress.