BJP repeats only 33 of its corporators in Ahmedabad civic polls

The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded 159 new faces for the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation polls in Ahmedabad. The saffron party came to power in AMC in 2005 with 96 seats of the total 129 seats from 43 wards of the city.

This year, the BJP has repeated only 33 incumbent corporators while 63 sitting corporators from various wards have been left out. Interestingly, only four chairpersons of various committees were able to retain their tickets, while eight have not been repeated by the Saffron party. Similarly, only two deputy chairpersons of the committees were lucky enough to get a ticket as the other nine failed to get one.

Of the nine BJP members of the standing committee only five have been retained.

In as many as seven wards including Gandhigram, Navrangpura, Stadium, Nava Vadaj, Potalia, Bapunagar and Isanpur the party has denied tickets to all three incumbent candidates. Amraiwadi is the only ward where the BJP has decided to repeat the whole panel. Of the 63 corporators who were left out, Rakesh Shah from Paldi, Geeta Patel from Stadium are member of legislative assembly while Dharmendra Shah has been appointed as chairman of AUDA. Therefore, there was no question of fielding them.

Interestingly, out of 63 corporators only two have proved to be turncoats for the BJP.  Deepak Patel from Paldi has joined the Congress and has filed his nomination as a Congress candidate from the ward while Dhanji Patel from Nikol Road has filed nomination as an independent candidate from Viratnagar ward.