Hardik Patel, Ravindra Jadeja's wife among 160 BJP candidates for Gujarat polls

Patidar agitation leader Hardik Patel will contest from Viramgam, his home turf, on a BJP ticket

Patidar agitation leader Hardik Patel, who joined BJP from Congress earlier this year; cricketer Ravindra Jadeja's wife Rivaba; and Manibhai Vaghela, the Congress turncoat who vacated Vadgam seat for Congress supported Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, are among 160 candidates whose names were declared by BJP for contesting the upcoming Assembly polls.

The party said that it has not repeated a total of 38 leaders this time including ex-CM Vijay Rupani, Deputy CM Nitin Patel, ex-ministers Bhupendra Chudasama, RC Faldu, Pradipsinh Jadeja, Saurabh Patel, Kaushik Patel on the basis that they wrote to the party leadership informing that they were not "willing" to contest polls.

Union minister and BJP leader Bhupendra Yadav announced the list in Delhi in a press conference accompanied by Gujarat BJP chief C R Paatil. Incumbent CM Bhupendra Patel will contest from Ghatlodia, which he won in the 2017 polls. Meanwhile, Gujarat Home minister Harsh Sanghavi will contest elections from Majura constituency.

Yadav said that out of 160 candidates, 14 belong to scheduled caste (SC), 42 scheduled tribe (ST), 14 women, four doctors and four PhD holders. He said the party has not repeated a total of 38 candidates that included Rupani, Patel among other senior leaders and former ministers.

The list also included controversial BJP MLA from Vadodara's Waghodia constituency, Madhu Srivastav and incumbent law minister Rajendra Trivedi. The seat of chief minister Bhupendra Patel has been kept unchanged. He will be contesting from Ghatlodia seat in Ahmedabad.

The BJP has fielded Kantilal Amratiya from Morbi seat, changing the sitting MLA and incumbent minister Brijesh Merja. Merja has won 2017 polls as a Congress MLA but defected to BJP in 2020. In the 2021 bypoll, he won as a BJP candidate by a margin little less than 3000 votes. BJP leaders said that in the list of 160 candidates, 69 are sitting MLAs.

Addressing the press conference during the release of the list, Gujarat BJP president Paatil claimed, "As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself said that this election will break his winning record. We will not only break records in winning number of seats but also biggest leads and votes share."