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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on Wednesday set to campaign in Gujarat, which is heading to polls in the third phase of voting in the Lok Sabha elections on May 7. PM Modi is expected to address public meetings in the Banaskantha and Sabarkantha Lok Sabha constituencies, which is expected to boost the BJP’s electioneering in the state.
Three years before he became the Prime Minister and even before the BJP picked him as a candidate for the post, in 2011, the Ranjitvilas Palace of the erstwhile Wankaner royals had hosted a felicitation for Narendra Modi where he was hailed as the ‘PM-in-Waiting’. Breaking an almost 15-year hibernation where not many were in politics, around 18 royal scions came out in support of the then chief minister.
In contrast to the recent history of squabbling among Congress workers in Gujarat for election tickets, a different Congress story is unfolding in Rajkot this time. Around a dozen local leaders drove to the residence of Paresh Dhanani in Amreli on April 9 to request him to take on Parshottam Rupala of the BJP in the Lok Saba polls, two decades after his famous victory over the Union Minister.
AS FAR as support goes, Chaitar Vasava can’t ask for more. The tribal Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA, who is contesting from the Bharuch Lok Sabha seat and is not allowed to enter parts of the constituency under court orders, has his two wives working in perfect coordination to mount a challenge against his rival, six-time BJP MP Mansukh Vasava.
Parshottam Rupala, his aides say, has never had it easy – that is, till he joined politics. The second of six children of a farmer, he would walk 12 km to school; when he became principal at a government school, it was only to lose his job to an unlucky court ruling.
On March 5, when he arrived in Gujarat’s Rajkot as the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate for the constituency, Union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying Parshottam Rupala was welcomed by his supporters and BJP workers, including the incumbent party MP Mohan Kundariya, with fanfare.
AT THE AGE of 69, Parshottam Rupala, the Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, will be contesting his debut Lok Sabha election, from Rajkot. This will also be his first election in 22 years, having lost the last one he contested, in 2002. Rupala, who has been a key organisational figure in the Gujarat BJP, speaks to The Indian Express about the party’s targets in the coming polls, the political landscape of Gujarat, and the challenges during his tenure as Union minister. Excerpts:
EVEN AS it has been battling setback after setback in Gujarat, the Congress was perhaps not prepared for this one. Six days after the party gave Rohan Gupta a ticket from the Ahmedabad East Lok Sabha constituency, he announced on X that he was withdrawing his candidature, citing his father’s health.