BJP wins Gujarat by-poll, its third win in Jasdan since 1960

Ahmedabad, Dec 23: The ruling BJP comfortably won the bypoll from Jasdan Assembly seat in Gujarat Sunday, taking its tally in the House to 100. The Jasdan election result is also the third time that the BJP has won the seat after Gujarat was formed in 1960.

BJP candidate Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated his nearest rival, Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya, by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said. Bavaliya retained the Assembly seat in Rajkot which he had won as Congress candidate in 2017.

Notably, since the formation of Gujarat in 1960, the BJP has won Jasdan only once - in the by-election of 2009 when Bavaliya vacated the seat after being elected to the Lok Sabha from Rajkot.

The by-election was necessitated after Bavaliya, an influential Koli community leader who had won the seat on a Congress ticket in 2017, resigned from the party and joined the BJP.

Bavaliya was made a Cabinet minister in the BJP government the same day. The BJP fielded him for the by-election from Jasdan, which has a sizeable Koli population.

Bavaliya had won from the Jasdan seat five times in the past as the Congress candidate - in 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007 and 2017.

The bypoll has become a battle of prestige between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress in the wake of the latter winning the just held assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said that the victory in Jasdan is a clear indication that BJP will win all 26 seats in Gujarat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

"This victory is a clear indication that BJP will win 26 seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. People of Gujarat are with BJP and they are prepared to make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister again," Rupani said.

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)