Spotlight on AAP’s CM face in high-stakes battle
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers are busy making preparations to put up posters of their chief ministerial candidate Isudan Gadhvi. One makes a point about neither the Congress nor the BJP declaring their chief ministerial candidates. The poster has a picture of Gadhvi on one side, party symbols of the BJP and Congress accompanied by a question mark on the other.
Another poster promises free electricity, world-class education and health care, government jobs and free pilgrimages.
A former television journalist, Gadhvi entered politics last year and will contest his first election, from the Khambhaliya seat; he is pitted against sitting MLA Vikram Madam of the Congress, a twotime legislator and a two-time MP from the same seat. The BJP has fielded ex-MLA Mulubhai Bera.
“During my days as a journalist, I used to raise issues of the people.
My show ‘Maha Manthan’ (on Gujarati news channel VTV) gained much popularity and people felt that it really helped solve their problems. Recently, when I visited a village, Kolava, I met a person who has not watched television since the time I quit the profession. He showed me his broken television and said he threw a remote at it on the day I resigned from the channel,” said Gadhvi, who is part of a farming family from a small village near Khambhaliya.
Both Bera and Madam are Ahirs, a community of pastoralists. Out of about 306,000 voters, around 54,000 are Ahirs. There are around 46,000 Muslims, 32,000 Satwaras, 19,000 Dalits, 16,000 Kshatriyas and 14,000 Gadhvis, according to estimates by all three parties.
The area is dominated by cattle grazers and Gadhvi is likely to get some boost after the Gujarat Maldhari Mahapanchayat on Thursday issued a statement that they would vote against the BJP.
Gadhvi said: “People are fed up with the BJP and we have seen how badly they did in 2017. There is a lot of anti-incumbency.”