Gandhinagar Election 2022: All eyes on this BJP stronghold once represented by LK Advani, now Amit Shah in LS

Gandhinagar North, Gandhinagar South Gujarat Election 2022: Gandhinagar is among 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 any parliamentary election from Gandhinagar since 1989.

The capital city has two assembly seats by its name - Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. Part of the Gandhinagar district, both the assembly seats 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 an equal number of Vidhan sabha seats.

After delimitation, two assembly elections have been held in Gandhinagar North and Gandhinagar South. The BJP won both elections in Gandhinagar South but could manage to hold North only 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, Congress' CJ Chavda defeated Ashokkumar Ranchhodbhai Patel by nearly 5,000 votes.

In Gandhinagar South, the BJP secured nearly 50 per cent of 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 on the BJP, which for the first time in its over two-decades rule was brought under the double-digit of 99 in 2017. However, two of these leaders, have now joined the saffron party, leaving only Jignesh Mewani with the Congress.      

From Gandhinagar South, the Congress has fielded Himanshu Patel while the AAP candidate is Dolat Patel. Alpesh Thakor was earlier with the Congress but he joined the BJP in July 2019. He contested the 2017 assembly polls on a Congress ticket and won Radhanpur by securing 48.23 per cent votes. He, however, lost the by-election from the same constituency to Congress' 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 votes while BJP got 46 per cent.  

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