Heavyweights, ministers bite dust

Ahmedabad: As many as 16 senior leaders from Gujarat, including ministers from the outgoing BJP-led dispensation and Congress heavyweights, were humbled in the just-concluded Assembly elections.

Sitting and former MLAs were among those defeated in the polls, the results of which were declared on Monday.

Though the BJP will form the next government in Gujarat after a sixth straight victory in the state, the results came as a blow to the party with six of its ministers and the Speaker of the Assembly, Ramanlal Vora, losing to the Congress.

Top Congress leaders and party heavyweights also bit the dust, even though the opposition party fared better than it did in 2012, winning 77 seats as compared to the 61 it scored then.

Among the senior Congress leaders defeated were Arjun Modhwadia, Shaktisinh Gohil, Siddharth Patel and Tushar Chaudhary.

Mr Modhwadia, who was the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly between 2004 and 2007, lost to state fisheries minister and senior BJP leader Babubhai Bokhiriya by a narrow margin of 1,855 votes. Bokhiriya had defeated him in 2012, too, from Porbandar.

Mr Gohil, the sitting MLA from the Abdasa seat in Kutch district, who would have been in the race for the chief minister’s chair in the event of a Congress victory, lost the Mandvi constituency of Kutch, which the BJP’s Virendrasinh Jadeja won by a comfortable margin of over 9,000 votes.

Mr Gohil, who is the national spokesperson of the Congress, had served as a minister of finance, health, education and Narmada in the two consecutive Congress governments. He was the leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly from 2007 to 2012.

In 2012, he was defeated from the Bhavnagar-Rural Assembly segment, but had won from Abdasa in a 2014 bypoll.

Several BJP leaders, MLAs and ministers also met with a similar fate this time. Six ministers in the outgoing state government, including two of Cabinet rank, fell by the wayside.

Among those who tasted defeat was the minister of state for urban development and health, Shankar Chaudhary.