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Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday named Isudan Gadhvi, a former Gujarati TV journalist as their chief ministerial candidate for the Gujarat elections.
At a press conference in Ahmedabad, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal stated that a State-wide survey was held a week ago to get the people’s choice for the party’s CM face. Kejriwal stated, “We had received about 16,48,000 responses from the survey conducted and about 73 per cent people have supported the name of Ishudan Gadhvi.”
Chief ministerial face
Kejriwal added that in a democratic process to elect the CM candidate, the people voted for Gadhvi. Notably, there were other prominent leaders from AAP who were considered to be in race for the chief ministerial face, including the State Party Unit Chief Gopal Italia and General Secretary Manoj Soratihya.
As a journalist, Gadhvi, 40, was popular among the rural viewers for his style of raising the issues and debating. Gadhvi worked with a private new channel, while also worked with national broadcaster’s Gujarati edition Doordarshan Gujarati. Gadhvi was popular with shows of Yojana and Mahamanthan. Media observers in the State maintained that Gadhvi laid thrust on rural reporting and highlighted issues of villages and agriculture, that prompted other regional news channels to follow the suit and rural coverage started generating revenue and audience for the channels. However, the sources informed that there is a sense of detachment among the elite viewers in the urban pockets.
Dual purpose
Political observers opine that Gadhvi as a CM face for AAP would serve dual purpose as it takes care of the representation of OBC community — the largest vote bank, and also with his popularity among the rural viewers, he will be a familiar face for the rural voters to relate.
Gadhvi was born in Pipaliya village of Khambhalia taluka in Jamnagar district. After completing his graduation in Jamnagar, he joined journalism in Ahmedabad.
Notably, the party has announced candidates for 118 constituencies out of the 182.
Poor performance
On the other hand, in the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) camp, the brainstorming over the ticket allocation continued for the second day with Union Home Minister Amit Shah taking stock of the seats where the party had poor performance in the previous elections of 2017. The party sources have indicated that it will contest the 2022 polls under the incumbent Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel.
The Congress, however, has so far not announced its candidates nor any chief ministerial candidate.
The polling to the 182-seat Gujarat Assembly will be held in two phases, on December 1 and 5. The counting will take place on December 8.
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