Geniben, the giant slayer of Gujarat, who ‘crowd-funded’ her campaign

Slogans of ‘Banas ni ben, Geniben’ filled the air as Congress MLA from Vav began to lead formidably against the BJP candidate from Banaskantha Lok Sabha constituency on Tuesday.

Geniben Thakor (44) went on to defeat Rekhaben Chaudhari, a first-time candidate and a professor of mathematics in the government engineering college in Palanpur, by a margin of 30,406, becoming the only Congress candidate to win a seat in Gujarat this Lok Sabha elections.

Even as the counting was underway, Thakor said it was a victory for the people of Banaskantha. “Satyamev Jayate,” she said in her first reaction after gaining a comfortable lead.

Thakor was among the candidates whose campaign was crowd-funded after the Congress alleged it had “run out of funds”, and could not support its nominees.

In March, Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil had told mediapersons that the party does not have money for poll campaigning because the Union government seized Rs 115.321 crore by freezing 11 bank accounts in a seven-year-old Income Tax case.

Speaking to mediapersons on Tuesday, Gohil said, “In Gujarat, BJP said Congress will not get a candidate, then it said BJP will win every seat with a margin of over 5 lakh votes. Barring one or two seats, BJP has not won with a high margin… I thank Gujarat’s voters for making Geniben, our ben, desh ki ben”.

In the Vav Assembly constituency, Thakor, an OBC, had earned the reputation of a giant slayer when she defeated BJP candidate and chairman of Banas Dairy, Shankar Chaudhary, by a margin of over 6,600 votes in the 2017 state polls.

In the 2022 state polls, Chaudhary contested from Tharad in Banaskantha district, and Thakor again won from Vav against BJP’s Swarupji Thakor in an election where the Congress