In the triangular election of the Gujarat Assembly polls between the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP Congress and Aam Aadmi Party AAP ruling party candidate Kantilal Amrutiya has managed to win a major victory in the Morbi assembly election.
Amtrutiya, who had emerged as a saviour in the bridge collapse tragedy, won by holding a lead of more than 61,5000 votes against Congress party candidate and his closest rival Jayantilal Patel.
AAP candidate Pankaj Ransariya, who is also a Patidar, failed to woo voters and stood in the third spot with over 6,000 votes. The Morbi is largely dominated by Patidar voters and is considered a traditional stronghold of the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP. Amtrutiya had polled more than 37,500 votes for the Morbi seat of Saurashtra region, while Patel received over 20,000 votes.
Amrutiya rose to fame after videos showed him jumping into the river to rescue the survivors of the Morbi bridge collapse. Amrutiya s this act earned him nationwide praise and the title of Morbi hero. Moreover, this is not the first time Amrutiya had won from the Morbi segment as he had already emerged victorious five times in the past. In the previous elections, Jayantilal Patel had lost five times against BJP rivals.
Morbi came into the limelight after the British-era suspension bridge collapsed into the Machchhu River on October 30, 2022, killing 135 people. The tragedy is believed to have changed the poll equations, according to media reports.
The ruling BJP, after sensing that Amutiya's popularity will come in handy for the party, dropped its sitting MLA Brijesh Merja, who was also a former minister, and fielded Amrutiya, who was otherwise not in the reckoning as a candidate.
In the recently concluded assembly polls, Gujarat had a turnout of 64.33 per cent to 182 seats, a drop of more than 4 per cent compared to the turnout in the 2017 polls.
The turnout for the first phase of the election held on December 1 for 89 seats was 63.31 per cent and 65.30 per cent for the second phase of the polling held on December 5 for 93 seats, according to the latest data shared by the Election Commission on Tuesday.
Nearly 3.16 crore voters out of a total of 4.91 crore registered voters had turned up on December 1 and 5 to exercise their franchise, it said. The 3.16 crore voters included 1.69 crore males 66.74 per cent 1.46 crore females 61.75 per cent and 445 voters from the 'third gender' category out of 1,391.