In Gandhinagar, an academic question: What will Amit Shah’s victory margin be?

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.

With Shah’s victory a given, the BJP’s target for Gandhinagar is ensuring that the party’s chief electoral strategist wins by no less than 10 lakh votes (double his 2019 margin). Patel, meanwhile, did not just plough a desolate furrow but also struggled to raise funds, with a donation drive raising – by her own admission – barely Rs 10 lakh.

Given Shah’s poll duties across the country, his family, including wife Sonalben, son Jay and daughter-in-law Rishika, did the heavy lifting in Gandhinagar, with the campaign wrapping up on Sunday.

Addressing a voter awareness campaign in the Bopal area of Ahmedabad, Jay exhorted the crowd: “Last time, only 52% of you in Bopal voted, and we got 98% of those votes. This time ensure that 85% of you vote. Will you do that?”

The 10 lakh target for Shah, 59, was set by Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil – a whopping 3 lakh votes more than the all-time high margin of 6.96 lakh votes, by which the BJP’s Pritam Munde won the Beed seat in Maharashtra in 2014. Paatil, who himself missed this record by a whisker in 2019, has now set a 5 lakh-margin target for 24 of the Gujarat seats and 10 lakh for Gandhinagar, with one seat (Surat) won uncontested.

Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, who represents the Ghatlodia Assembly segment falling within Gandhinagar, was among those who campaigned for Shah.

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