Ground report: Pivotal contest in Surat may hold key to numbers

SURAT: It is 20 minutes past 10pm, and 38-year-old Suraj Chainani is harried. But it’s a tolerable kind of harried — the one that comes from running a booming business. He steps out of the shopping mart he owns in Jahangirpura for a breather. In front of Chainani is a six-lane road. Towering just behind him are rows and rows of apartment complexes, most built over the past 15 years. It is these apartments that are evidence of Surat’s ever-expanding urban spaces, and are the source of Chainani’s prosperity. “...with their promise of free electricity, I think maybe I should give the AAP a chance. But then, all th growth happened under t

BJP. Can I betray them Chainani said.

For the last decade, th

BJP has dominated Surat’ politics on an unpre dented scale.

But the 202

Surat municipal body elections changed this narrative; appearing to herald the arrival of a new Opposition. In the 2015 municipal polls, the BJP won 80 out of 116 seats, with a vote share of 51.5%. But in 2021, out of the shadows emerged the AAP, winning a considerable 28.58% of the vote, and 27 seats. It is this momentum that the AAP hopes to capitalise on in a tate where the Congress has always had a strong base.