Gujarat Results 2022: Aam Aadmi Party Chief Ministerial candidate Isudan Gadhvi lost in the Gujarat Assembly election from Khambhalia seat on Thursday by more than 18,000 votes. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained Gujarat by winning a record number of seats in the Assembly election.
Gadhvi was leading in the initial rounds over Congress's incumbent MLA Vikram Madam, while BJP's Mulubhai Bera was trailing in the third place. But Bera surpassed his rivals in the later rounds of vote counting and secured a comfortable victory.
The BJP had won the seat in 2007 and 2012 but lost to the Congress in a bypoll in 2014. The Congress retained the seat in 2017.
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Other candidates in fray from Khambhalia seat were Ahir Vikrambhai Arjanbhai Maadam from Congress, Solanki Govind Hamirbhai from Bahujan Samaj Party, Bukhari Yakub Mohammad Hushen from All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen, Chetariya Lakhubhai Lagdhirbhai from Gujarat Nav Nirman Sena. Five Independents were also in the contest from this seat.
Khambhalia emerged as one of the high-profile seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections after the AAP fielded Gadhvi, its CM face, from this constituency in the Saurashtra region.
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A former TV news anchor, Gadhvi was born and brought up in Khambhalia. But social equations in this Ahir-dominated seat probably did not favour him as his own Gadhvi community is numerically not significant in the area.
On the other hand, both Madam of the Congress and the BJP's Bera come from the Ahir community. Madam had also enjoyed the support of the Muslim community which constitutes the second largest voting bloc, but this time around it seemed to have favoured the AAP.
In the last several decades, no non-Ahir candidate has won from the seat.