Iim-educated woman is Cong pick in PM’S former constituency ›

My focus is on education, employment and women empowerment. I am sure people of this seat, especially youth and women, will put their trust in me. SHWETA BRAHMBHATT, Congress candidate

AHMEDABAD: The city’s Maninagar seat, a BJP bastion and constituency of Narendra Modi before he became the Prime Minister, is set for an interesting contest between the ruling party’s sitting MLA Suresh Patel and Congress’ suave and foreign-educated young face Shweta Brahmbhatt.

Brahmbhatt, 34, is perhaps the only candidate in this assembly election who has received training to be a politician, that too from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore.

Though Brahmbhatt’s selection came as a surprise to many, despite the fact that her father Narendra Brahmbhatt is a senior Congress leader of the city, the aspiring politician is confident of winning the hearts of voters through her “vision and determination”. However, it will not be easy for the Congress to take on the BJP in Maninagar, which houses the state headquarters of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Maninagar is considered an unbreachable bastion of the BJP since 1990.

PM Modi, then as Gujarat CM, represented it in the assembly in 2002, 2007 and 2012. Prior to that, BJP leader Kamlesh Patel represented the seat from 1990 till 1998. In 2012, Modi defeated his closest rival, Congress candidate Shweta Bhatt, the wife of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt who was a stringent critic of the Gujarat government under Modi, by a margin of over 86,000 votes. Following Modi’s resignation from Maninagar after becoming the PM, the people elected BJP’S Suresh Patel by a thumping majority of over 49,000 votes in the by-election to the seat. Now, Patel will face firsttimer Brahmbhatt, who did her masters in international finance from the University of Westminster, London, in 2005.

She also worked as an investment banker with multinational firms in India. In 2012, she went to IIM, Bangalore, to pursue the India-women in Leadership programme, designed to provide training to aspiring women politicians.

“I have seen politics since an early age. I consider politics social work. My sole purpose to contest this poll is to be the voice of youth and women,” she said.

“My focus is on education, employment and women empowerment. I am sure people of this seat, especially the youth and women, will put their trust in me,” she said.