‘Giant Slayer’ From Gujarat; Congress’ Geniben Thakor Opens Account After A Decade

Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP bastion has been ‘Congress Mukt’ for the past 10 years. Breaking the Lok Sabha jinx, the Congress has finally opened its account in Gujarat in the Lok Sabha polls. Notably, Geniben Thakor is also the first woman candidate to win the seat since 1962.

The two-time Congress MLA Geniben Thakor won the Banaskantha seat by defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rekhaben Chaudhary, a political novice with a margin of 33,801 votes.

The Congress leader’s first reaction after she attained a deceiving lead on her BJP rival was- ‘Satyamev Jayate’.

Ms Thakor is known to be the ‘giant killer’ as she had handed a defeat to the Gujarat assembly speaker Shankar Chaudhary in the 2017 election. Adding on to the peculiarity of the win, Thakor was among the Congress candidates who were crowd-funded after the Congress alleged that it had “run out of funds” and could not support its nominees.

In the 2022 state polls, Chaudhary contested from Tharad in Banaskantha district and Thakor won from Vav against BJP’s Swarupji Thakor in the election. Thakor though being a Congress leader, she has been vocal about the issues related to women’s welfare throughout her political journey even if it meant to support the ruling BJP which she did during the Budget session in the Assembly last year.

In an instance that occurred in the previous year, Ms Thakor advocated for amendments to the Marriage Act supporting BJP’s Kalol MLA Fatehsinh Chauhan. She proposed mandatory parental signature for registration and even insisted that such registration should only be permitted in the taluka where the couple lives.

Apart from women’s welfare issues, Ms Thakor is also known for her strong stance against alcohol and for implementing a liquor ban. This was evident from the incident when her brother Ramesh Nagaji got caught in a drunken state, she did not step down from her standpoint.

Ms Thakor was among the 16 MLAs who were suspended for protesting in the Gujarat Assembly last year against the suspension of Rahul Gandhi from the parliament. Later in February 2024, she along with 10 other Congress MPs were suspended once again for bringing up the issue of fake government offices in the state.

Thakor, the Congress stalwart made her electoral debut in the 2012 assembly elections from Vav constituency. After defeating the senior BJP leader five years later in 2017 for over 6,000 votes, she retained the seat in the 2022 elections.