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WHEN Kuniyil Kailashnathan, 72, bowed out of the Gujarat bureaucracy Saturday, choosing ‘voluntary retirement’ after his term as Chief Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister expired, it marked the end of an era.
Amid scorching heat and with a seat already decided, the more than 4.9 crore voters of Gujarat will decide the fate of 266 candidates for the remaining 25 parliamentary and five Assembly constituencies on Tuesday. Among those who will vote are Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will exercise their in the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency.
Ten lakh vote margin vs 10 lakh rupees. The lopsided battle for the Gandhinagar seat of Gujarat perhaps can’t be framed better than this. If on the BJP side is Union Home Minister Amit Shah, looking for his second successive victory from the seat that the party has not lost since 1984, on the other is Sonal Patel, whose only electoral experience so far is the 2022 Assembly poll loss from Naranpura.
Shobhli Rathwa, from the Bharkuwa village in Gujarat’s tribal Chhota Udepur district, walks to a well a kilometre from her mud-thatched home almost a dozen times a day to fetch water for her family of five and two cattle. Each time she lugs the water back home, she passes by the cemented water tap “installed” a year ago in her courtyard as part of the Centre’s ambitious ‘Nal Se Jal’ scheme.
THE BSP is the only national party that has fielded a Muslim candidate for the Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, with even the Congress refraining from nominating one.
The build-up to the Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat has been dominated by statewide protests held by Kshatriyas over the alleged derogatory remarks made by Parshottam Rupala, the Union minister and BJP’s Rajkot candidate, against the community in a March 22 speech.
NEARLY afortnight after the Surat Lok Sabha seat was won uncontested by the BJP, after the Congress candidate’s nomination was declared invalid and eight candidates withdrew, the ripples from it are yet to die down. Days later, the Congress’s Indore candidate dropped out on the last day of withdrawal of nominations, leaving the party without a nominee in the seat.
In the posh Kalavad Road area of Rajkot, a gate opens onto the makeshift office of the Kshatriya Asmita Andolan Samiti. With voter lists at hand, plans are being charted here to reach out to Kshatriya-dominated localities in the constituency.