Congress breaks Gujarat jinx, opens account after a decade
The Congress failed to win any seats in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Congress’s Geniben Thakor won Gujarat’s Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat on Tuesday defeating Rekha Chaudhary of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was aiming to win all 26 seats in Gujarat for a third time, by 30,000 votes.
Early trends showed the Congress was leading on four seats in Gujarat but eventually Thakor emerged as the lone winner from her party.
Banaskantha has been a BJP stronghold. In 2019, BJP’s Parbatbhai Patel won the seat defeating Congress’s Parthi Bhatol by a margin of 368000 votes. The BJP won the seat in the 2014 elections as well.
Political experts attributed Thakor’s strong grassroots connect and support among the influential Thakor community, which has a substantial presence in Banaskantha, for her victory.
The Congress failed to win any seats in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In 2009, the Congress won 11 of the 26 seats and the BJP 14 in Gujarat.