Gujarat: Rekhaben Hiteshbhai Chaudhary, BJP Candidate From Banaskantha Constituency (image-facebook/Rekhaben Hitesh Chaudhari)

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its first candidate list on Saturday. In the first list, the saffron party has fielded Rekhaben Hiteshbhai Chaudhary as its candidate from Banaskantha constituency. 

The first announced list consists of 195 candidates. Rekhaben is the only female candidate announced in the first list of Lok Sabha candidates from Gujarat. The saffron party has announced candidates in 15 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat. Five sitting MPs of the party were dropped from the candidate list and new faces were added. 

Rekhaben Chaudhary has been chosen as the candidate by revoking the ticket of the sitting MP Prabhatbhai Savabhai Patel. She is the granddaughter of Galbabhai Chaudhary, founder of Banas Dairy.

Banas Dairy is a division of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation which runs under the ownership of the Ministry of Cooperation, Government of Gujarat, and is Asia’s largest milk producer. 

Rekhaben has completed Masters, M.Phil and Ph.D in Mathematics. The 44-year-old candidate hails from the city of Palanpur. She has worked as a Professor in the Engineering College for the last 20 years. 

Banaskantha constituency is one among the 26 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state of Gujarat. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, BJP candidate Parbatbhai Patel won the election by securing 6,79,108 votes. 

Dr Chaudhary is the wife of Dr.Hitesh Chaudhary. Hitesh is the party in charge of the district Morbi. He was previously in charge of the Kutch district. He has also served as the Banaskantha district BJP general secretary and was a three-time office bearer of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in Gujarat at the state level. He has also been a senate and syndicate member at Gujarat University earlier.