Congress’s Imran Khedawala Only Muslim MLA In 182-Member Gujarat Assembly
Ahmedabad:
Imran Khedawala of the National Assembly is the only Muslim candidate elected to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly in the recently concluded polls, in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an overwhelming victory.
The outgoing parliament has three Muslim legislators, all from Congress.
Mr Khedawala, the incumbent MLA of Parliament from the Jamalpur-Khadia Assembly constituency in Ahmedabad, won the election by a margin of 13,658 votes on Thursday to keep the seat.
He defeated his closest rival, BJP’s Bhushan Bhatt, in the Muslim-majority constituency where All India’s state president Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and former MLA Sabir Kabliwala also joined the conflict.
The congress presented six Muslim candidates, of which three MLAs chose the venue. Of these, five candidates, including two MLAs, lost.
In 2017, three out of five candidates from the minority community led by the main Opposition won. Muslims make up about 10% of the population of Gujarat.
Incumbent Parliament and MLA candidate Gyasuddin Sheikh lost to BJP’s Kaushik Jain in Dariapur Council area of Ahmedabad district. Another Opposition lawmaker, Mohammed Javed Pirzada, faced defeat in Wankaner in Morbi district at the hands of saffron garb.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate won 53,110 votes and contributed to defeating Pirzada.
In the Abdasa seat in Kutch district, the Muslim congressional candidate Jat Mamad Jung was defeated by BJP candidate and former MLA Pradhyumansinh Jadeja with about 9,000 votes.
The AAP placed Muslim candidates in three seats in the Council – Jamalpur-Khadia, Dariapur and Jambusar – but none of them won.
The BJP did not put forward a single Muslim candidate, while 12 All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) candidates from the minority community entered the fray, but they were all beaten. lose. Two of these AIMIM candidates finished third in their respective constituencies.
In the just-ended election, the BJP won 156 seats, the highest of any party in Gujarat’s history, while the National Assembly came in second with 17 seats. AAP won in five assembly segments.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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