Rajkot West, Gujarat Election 2022: The Rajkot West assembly seat is a bastion of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it has never lost an election from here since 1980. Even before that, the seat was with Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP.
Many top leaders from the saffron party have represented this seat in the Gujarat Assembly. Among them are Narendra Modi, Vajubhai Vala, and Vijay Rupani. Modi won this in February 2002 in the by-election.
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Vajubhai Vala, now Governor of Karnataka, held this seat from 1985 to 1998 and from 2002 to 2014. After Vala was appointed as Governor in 2014, Vijay Rupani contested from here and won the seat twice – in 2014 and 2017. Rupani served as the chief minister from August 2016 to September 2021. He succeeded Anandiben Patel.
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In the 2017 election, Rupani secured 60.67 per cent votes against Congress’ Indranil Rajguru who could manage only 35.89 per cent votes. Rupani had defeated Rajguru by nearly 54,00 votes – higher than the margin recorded in 2012. In 2012, Rupani won this seat by 23, 740 margin. This time, Rupani is not contesting the assembly election, while Rajguru has been fielded by the Congress from Rajkot East.
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Ahead of the election, Rupani said that he served as the chief minister for five years and now the responsibility should be given to new workers. He said he won’t contest the poll and will work to make a chosen candidate win.
This time, the BJP has fielded Darshita Shah from Rajkot West, who will be taking on Dinesh Joshi of AAP and Mansukh Kalariya of the Congress.
Rajkot West is an assembly segment of the Rajkot Lok Sabha constituency, where the BJP has been in power since 1989 except for one term (2009-2014). For BJP, Shivlal Vekaria won the Rajkot parliamentary seat in 1989 and 1991, and then Vallabhbhai Kathiria held this seat from 1996 to 2009. Since 2014, Mohanbhai Kundariya of the BJP has been representing the seat in the Lower House.
Rajkot West will vote in the first phase on December 1.
