Bypolls for 7 Assembly seats in Gujarat alongside LS on Apr 30

By-elections to seven Assembly seats in Gujarat will be held on April 30 alongside the Lok Sabha polls in 26 parliamentary constituencies.
The Assembly seats which would go to polls are: Abdasa, Himmatnagar, Somnath, Lathi, Visavadar, Rapar and Mandvi (Surat). Among the 7 seats, by-elections to five except for Visavadar and Rapar were necessitated after sitting Congress MLAs from there joined BJP recently.
After being declared as the candidate for Abdasa in Kutch district, national spokesperson of Congress, Shaktisinh Gohil, who lost from Bhavnagar Rural seat in 2012 Assembly elections, kick started his campaign.
He is fighting against Chabbil Patel, who recently switched sides and crossed over to BJP. Patel was sitting Congress MLA from Abdasa seat but he resigned from the state Assembly and joined the saffron party, which fielded him.

Similarly, other Congress contenders have also stepped up their efforts to secure the seat.
The youngest among these candidates is Dr Nishant Chotai (35) for Somnath seat.

Chotai, an orthopaedic surgeon, said that people will not forgive those who breached their trust. He was referring to sitting Congress MLA Jasa Barad, who joined BJP recently.
"In 2012, voters gave mandate to Barad and sent him to Assembly as the Congress candidate. But, he cheated the people of Somnath by switching sides for personal gains and forced the election. I assure my voters that I will not leave them after winning," said Chotai, who is confident that Congress will once again secure the seat.

In Rapar, veteran Congress candidate Babubhai Shah will be highlighting the failure of BJP government to bring in Narmada water. Shah also claimed that 'Modi magic' will not work in Kutch.
"Not just Rapar, whole Kutch is still waiting for the waters of Narmada. The BJP government or their former MLAs never did anything worthwhile in that direction. We have started meeting people to make them aware about the failures of BJP leaders in solving problems of Kutch," said Shah.