Congress' Sonal Patel To Wrest Gujarat's Gandhinagar Seat From Amit Shah (image@sonaldatta)

From Gujarat”s Gandhinagar Lok Sabha, the Indian National Congress chose to field Sonal Patel against BJP big name Amit Shah. The 62 year-old All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary said she is not at all hesitant to fight against the Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is the sitting MP of the constituency, in the ongoing Lok Sabha election.

Patel, who is also the co-incharge of Mumbai and Western Maharashtra Congress said that anti-incumbency wave is visibly present in the region as the BJP failed to fulfill people”s needs. She accused BJP of intimidating Congress workers in her constituency and asked for a “level-playing field” during the elections. While talking to PTI, she said that she did not ask her party to give her ticket as she was busy with the matter of Mumbai and Western Maharashtra, but the party decided to field her.

She said, “our workers are being intimidated, nobody is ready to rent a space to us for organising meetings of party workers fearing that they will be targeted once the elections are over”. She accused BJP of using administrative machinery to fight the election. She said that police are calling Congress leaders to police station for silly cases from past.

Gandhinagar is a high-profile seat of Gujarat. It has been under the clasp of BJP since 1989 when Shankersinh Vaghela wrested the constituency from Congress. The constituency later elected BJP bigwigs like Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (he retained Lucknow Lok Sabha seat as the former prime minister contested in both seats and won both in 1996), till Amit Shah won it for the party in last elections. LK Advani has represented the constituency six times. During the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha election, all the 26 seats Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat has been won by BJP, which has been in power in the state since since 1995.