Ahmedabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kunvarji Bavalia won the Jasdan Assembly bypoll in Gujarat on Sunday, December 23, defeating Congress candidate Avsar Nakiya by more than 19,000 votes.
President of the BJP, Amit Shah personally supervised the crossing over of OBC strongman Bavaliya into the party.
Bavaliya is an influential leader of the Koli community, and had won the seat on Congress ticket in 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007 and 2017. He walked out of Congress earlier this year. The BJP has won the Jasdan seat only once in the by-election held in 2009, since the formation of Gujarat in 1960. Bavaliya had vacated the seat after being elected to Lok Sabha from Rajkot.
Nakiya is a Rajkot district panchayat member, and had once worked closely with Bavaliya, and has been his disciple for over 20 years. There were rumours that he would join the BJP too, as he was a close associate of Bavaliya. Nakiya contested the assembly election for first time.
A BJP worker had posted pictures of himself voting, with his finger on the EVM button showing Kunvarji Bavaliya’s name, in a WhatsApp group – ‘BJP Jasdan 72’, on December 20. The post had gone viral in social media. Following the incident election officials and Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Murali Krishna had asked the Returning Officer (RO) to file a report, and said that action will be taken against officials responsible, as carrying electronic gadgets inside polling centers is prohibited.
Kunvarji Bavaliya’s win has come as a reinforcement to the BJP, after losing the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
