Gujarat Elections 2022 Live Updates: NCP likely to contest Gujarat assembly polls in alliance with Congress

Popularity among the public, on-the-ground work done by the candidates, winnability and instilling young blood, are some of the key factors which were under consideration before the BJP arrived at its list of candidates for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly polls. A total of 160 names out of 182 were declared in the first list released on Thursday at the party headquarters in Delhi.

Gujarat's Saurashtra region, which accounts for 48 out of the total 182 Assembly seats in the state with a sizable Patidar and Other Backward Class (OBC) population, has the potential to tilt the power game in favour of or against the ruling BJP or opposition Congress in the next month's elections.

The Congress, which has been out of power in Gujarat for more than two decades, has fielded 21 of its sitting MLAs in the state for next month's Assembly elections. In its second list of 46 candidates, the grand old party has also named four Muslim candidates. The Gujarat Assembly elections will be held in two phases - on December 1 and 5, and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 8.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA representing the Matar Assembly constituency in Gujarat's Kheda district has joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after the ruling party denied a ticket to him from his seat for the upcoming Assembly elections. Kesarisinh Solanki, who had won the election twice from the seat, joined the AAP, said the Arvind Kejriwal-led party's state unit president Gopal Italia on Twitter.

Saffron has always been the dominant tint of Gujarat’s urban political landscape with voters displaying an unflinching loyalty to the BJP for several years. Except for Surat, where the threat of Aam Aadmi Party looms, the BJP chose to field fresh faces on several seats that make up eight municipal corporation areas. The rather bold decision not to repeat many of the sitting MLAs in its pocket boroughs stems from the stellar performance in all the previous elections when BJP handsomely captured over 90% -40 out of 46 in 2017 --of the seats and the candidates won by massive margins. Moreover, voting in the cities has always been on party symbols, unlike rural areas where caste equations and candidates are the key drivers.

The leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have often asserted that the party has adopted a ‘no-repeat’ formula. The list of poll candidates released on Thursday, however, makes it clear that the party simply cannot ignore strongmen. All that matters is ‘winnability’, a term the party often uses to justify exclusion of the members of the minority community. The party has fielded 11 ministers from the Vijay Rupani government, who had been dropped from the government in an attempt to curb potential anti-incumbency during the Covid-19 pandemic period.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be hinting at a course correction in its choice of candidates for the upcoming assembly poll. On Thursday, the party declared names of 160 candidates in its first list, while it is yet to declare the names of 22 candidates for central and north Gujarat constituencies.

Among 14 women candidates who got BJP tickets include Dr Payal Kukrani, a 30-year-old anaesthetist, who has been fielded from Naroda assembly seat in Ahmedabad city. The choice raised eyebrows as Kukrani’s father has been convicted and sentenced to a life term in the 2002 Naroda Patia massacre case. Other women candidates include cricketer Ravindra Jadeja's wife Rivaba Jadeja.

Rebutting the charge that BJP practices politics of polarisation, home minister Amit Shah on Thursday said that it was Congress which was guilty of appeasement because of which it opposed the construction of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and remained indifferent to building of the Kartarpur Corridor. “We did not feel scared when we took the initiative for the construction of Ram Mandir or Kartarpur Corridor because we don’t do politics of vote bank. We are working for making India a pre-eminent country and empower the poor,” he said.

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) six-term MLA Madhu Shrivastav who was not given ticket for the coming Gujarat Assembly elections said on Thursday that he will contest as an independent if his supporters wished so.

The Congress on Thursday released its second list of 46 candidates for the Gujarat Assembly elections scheduled to be held in two phases on December 1 and 5.The total number of candidates declared so far by the party is 89. The Congress last Friday had released its first list of 43 candidates for the elections

As BJP released its first list of candidates for Gujarat on Thursday, its no-repeat policy wherever candidates failed to meet its winnability criteria appeared to be the strictest in the Ahmedabad municipal corporation area where it declared nominees for 15 out of16 seats, retaining only CM Bhupendra Patel and two sitting MLAs. The candidate for Vatva hasn’t been declared.