BY- EDITOR BANIBRATA DATTA (FTFMI)
15th Legislative Assembly election was held in Gujarat from 1 to 5 December 2022 in two phases, to elect 182 members.
The Gujarat State Election Commission has officially announced the date for the Gujarat election in 2022. After a period of 89 and 93 Assembly Constituencies, respectively, where pooling will take place on the 01 and 05 December 2022, counting will begin on December 08, 2022 for both phases. The results will be made public by SEC in Gujarat.
The State Election Commission of Gujarat will conduct the election in two phases on the 1st and 5th of December 2022, after which the results will be made public on December 8th. The Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the newbie Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are all set to fight it out in the state’s elections. The state of Maharashtra, which houses Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, has been ruled by the BJP for 27 years. The BJP and the Congress have not revealed any candidate names, while the AAP has disclosed the names of over 100 candidates.
Many candidates from major political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian National Congress, and Aam Aadmi Party are expected to participate in the Gujarat Assembly Election in 2022. The party that gains a majority of seats in the legislature will be able to form a administration. On November 01, 2022, 89 Assembly Constituencies will be up for election in Phase 1, while 93 Assembly Constituencies will be up for election in Phase 2. To get more votes than competing candidates, a candidate must be elected from any assembly constituency. On November 5, 2022, only those candidates notification who meet the eligibility requirements will be published on the official website of SEC Gujarat. From each seat various contenders will file nominations, and just those candidates notification will be approved.
Gujarat election result 2022: The richest legislators are BJP’s Mansa MLA JS Patel (Rs 661 crore), Siddhpur MLA Balvantsinh Rajput (Rs 372 crore), also of BJP, and BJP’s Rajkot South MLA Ramesh Tilala (Rs 175 crore), the study showed.
A total of 151, or 83 per cent, of the 182 MLAs elected in the recent Assembly polls in Gujarat are crorepatis (worth over Rs 1 crore), up from 141 in the 2017 polls, as per a study conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Gujarat Election Watch.
The study showed the ruling BJP has 132 crorepati MLAs, followed by 14 of the Congress, all three Independents, and one each of the Aam Aadmi Party and the Samajwadi Party.
The BJP won the seventh straight term in Gujarat by winning a record 156 seats in the 182-member House. Of these 151 ‘crorepati’ legislators, 73 have assets of more than Rs 5 crore and 73 have assets in the Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore range. The average assets per winning candidate in Gujarat now stands at Rs 16. 41 crore, almost two times the figure for 2017, which was Rs 8. 46 crore.
The richest legislators are BJP’s Mansa MLA JS Patel (Rs 661 crore), Siddhpur MLA Balvantsinh Rajput (Rs 372 crore), also of BJP, and BJP’s Rajkot South MLA Ramesh Tilala (Rs 175 crore), the study showed.
The study by ADR, which works for electoral reforms and prepares such reports after analysing the self-sworn affidavits of legislators, stated that 74 MLAs were re-elected and their assets had grown by an average of Rs 2.61 crore, which is a rise of 40 per cent when compared to 2017.
Assets of BJP MLA Babubhai Patel grew from Rs 32.52 crore in 2017 to 61.47 crore in 2022, an increase of nearly Rs 28 crore, while that of BJP MLA Harsh Sanghavi grew from Rs 2.12 crore in 2017 to Rs 17 crore in 2022, an increase of Rs 15 crore.
The third spot on the list of assets’ rise was taken by BJP MLA Jagdish Vishwakarma, who saw a growth of Rs 14 crore in five years from Rs 14.75 crore to Rs 29.06 crore. The study shows six winning candidates are Ph.Ds, 19 are post-graduates, 24 are graduates, six are diploma holders, 86 have studied between Class V to XII, while seven have declared themselves just as “literate”.
On the age front, two MLAs are 29 years old, while two are 75 years old.
Results of the 2022 Gujarat assembly elections were declared on 8 December and even though Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has finished at the number three position, it has several reasons to celebrate.
By winning five out of 182 seats with a vote share of 12.92 percent, the AAP has made an entry as a formidable third front in the state, and its performance also makes it eligible for the status of a national party as it only needed a vote share of six percent and two seats to become one.
In AAP’s victory, however, lie two big questions:
At whose expense has the party made inroads in Gujarat?
What are the key lessons it must learn?
A thorough analysis of the data by the Election Commission of India (ECI) answers these question.