AAP's Isudan Gadhvi claims 'people of Gujarat fed-up with state leaders of BJP, we will win polls'

Khambhalia, Gujarat: Isudan Gadhvi, the AAP’s candidate for chief minister, claimed on Saturday that the fact that the BJP is focusing its campaign on Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonstrates how the people of Gujarat are tired of the state leaders of the ruling party. He claimed that his party is on track to end the nearly 25-year uninterrupted reign of the saffron party. In an interview with PTI, the journalist-turned-politician asserted that the people of Gujarat will elect a credible leader as their next Chief Minister in the assembly polls, noting that PM Modi won’t be a consideration. “Modi is Prime Minister, and he will remain in power at the Centre till 2024. The assembly polls are for electing the state government. The people of Gujarat are fed up with state leaders of the BJP and the Congress. There is no mass leader among them, while I am drawing support in every part of the state,” he said. While some poll watchers believe that 40-year-old Gadhvi, a former well-known Gujarati news anchor, has been involved in a difficult fight in Khambhalia and that social equations are not in his favour, he asserted that the AAP’s poll entry means that conventional calculations will not be accurate in either his constituency or in Gujarat. Although he is regarded as a decent person with public appeal, owed in some parts to his TV background, some critics have also referred to his party as a “general without soldiers”, suggesting that despite having a visible leadership, it may lack the ground network to compete with its rivals’ deeply ingrained election apparatus, especially the BJP. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has emerged as a genuine rival to the BJP in the state, according to Gadhvi, who swiftly rejected any such accusations and cited figures to support his claim. He asserted that over 50 lakh voters have physically gathered the “guarantees” (manifesto) that his party has pledged to give if it is elected to power and that the AAP has established committees of 11–15 people in each of the almost 52,000 voting booths in the state. “We do not believe in the old pattern of politics practised by the BJP and the Congress, in which panchayat members and local caste leaders were co-opted by them during the polls to collect votes. Ground workers are with us and so are people. It will be reflected in the poll results on 8 December,” he said. According to the estimated current popular vote share, the AAP is in front of the BJP while the Congress is well behind, according to Gadhvi. Gadhvi, who belongs to the Other Backward Classes (OBC), identified as the “son of a farmer” and claimed that the AAP had gained the support of the agricultural community because to its three promises of “bijli, pani, and daam” (electricity, water, and fair prices for crops). While farmers are generally supplied electricity in the night for irrigation purposes, the AAP has promised it during the daytime. Gadhvi claimed that the party’s promises to provide free electricity to citizens, fill the roughly two lakh open government positions, improve the education and health sectors as its leader Arvind Kejriwal “did” in Delhi, as well as provide monthly stipends to women and young people without jobs, have resonated with the public. While the BJP ran a “corrupt” government in Gujarat, the Congress, he alleged, failed in its role as an opposition by not raising the issues of people effectively. The AAP has sparked hope among the people of the state, and they will give it a chance to rule the state, he claimed. Gadhvi’s assembly seat Khambhalia falls in the Saurashtra region, which will go to polls in the first phase on December 1 along with south Gujarat and Kutch. The rest of the parts of the state will vote on 5 December and counting will take place on 8 December. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.