A lot at stake in Gandhinagar North, and its south

Gandhinagar North, Gandhinagar South Gujarat Election 2022: Gandhinagar is one of the strongholds of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party BJP Some of the party bigwigs like LK Advani, Shankersinh Vaghela and Amit Shah have represented this seat in Lok Sabha. Advani represented this seat in the Lower House from 1991 to 1996 and 1998 to 2014. In 2014 he vacated the seat for Amit Shah, who is the current MP from Gandhinagar. The saffron party, which has been in power in Gujarat for the last 27 years, has never lost a parliamentary election from Gandhinagar since 1989.

The capital city has two assembly seats by its name - Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. Both assembly seats, part of the Gandhinagar district, came into existence in 2008 after the delimitation exercise. Gandhinagar North is one of seven assembly segments of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat, while Gandhinagar South falls under the Ahmedabad East parliamentary constituency, which has equal number of Vidhan sabha seats.

After delimitation, two assembly elections have been held in Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. Both the BJP won the elections in Gandhinagar South but could only hold North in 2012. The party had won Gandhinagar North by over 4,000 votes in the first election but lost it to Congress in the subsequent clash held in 2017. In the last election, Congressman CJ Chavda defeated Ashokkumar Ranchhodbhai Patel by nearly 5,000 votes.

In Gandhinagar South, the BJP won nearly 50 per cent of the votes in both contests. This time, the party has fielded Alpesh Thakor, one of the three young leaders who gave a real scare to the ruling BJP in 2015 -- the year in which Hardik Patel led the biggest Patidar reservation protest against then chief minister Anandiben Patel.

Alpesh Thakor, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mewani formed the troika which took over the BJP, which was brought under the double-digit of 99 in 2017 for the first time in its two-decades rule. The saffron party has now joined two of these leaders, leaving only Jignesh Mewani with the Congress.

The Congress has elected Himanshu Patel from Gandhinagar South, while the AAP candidate is Dolat Patel. Alpesh Thakor was with the Congress earlier in the day, but he joined the BJP in July 2019. He contested the 2017 assembly poll on a Congress ticket and won Radhanpur by winning 48.23 per cent of the vote. He lost the election in the same constituency to Congressman Raghubhai Desai in 2019.

In Gandhinagar North, BJP's Ritaben Patel is up against Virendrasinh Vaghela of Congress and Mukesh Patel of the AAP. In the last election, Congress had secured over 49 per cent of the vote, while BJP had 46 per cent.

A lot is at stake for Amit Shah and the BJP in Gandhinagar, considering the parliamentary legacy of the constituency. The BJP would like to show that it has a complete grip over its traditional bastion, and would like to bag both seats. In the second phase of the second phase of the election, Gandhinagar North and South will go to polls on December 5.