Courier firm founder, OBC chief are BJP's Gujarat Rajya Sabha candidates

The ruling party will have a walkover on both the seats since the Congress has decided not to nominate any candidate.

By Darshan Desai

BJP flag. (File photo.)

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sprang a surprise on Tuesday as it announced the names of candidates for by-elections to two Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat. The polls will take place on March 1. Among the candidates is an old-time party worker, Ram Mokariya, who is also the founder-chairman of a courier company. Mokariya has been associated with the party for nearly four decades. Another candidate is other backward classes (OBC) leader Dinesh Anavadiya.

The ruling party will have a walkover on both the seats since the Congress has decided not to nominate any candidate since it doesn’t have the adequate numbers to win any seat. The opposition party will have to concede the seat that fell vacant after the death of veteran Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

Another seat held by the BJP fell vacant after the death of recently-elected Abhay Bhardwaj. Both, Patel and Bhardwaj, succumbed to Covid-19 complications.

Gujarat’s OBC Morcha chief Dinesh Anavadiya is a senior leader from North Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. He served as the director of the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation between 2014-17.

Ram Mokariya, who is a surprise choice, had founded Gujarat’s first Shree Maruti Courier service in 1985 to cater to four cities of the Saurashtra region where he belongs to. The primary reason behind Maruti’s success was its service to the remotest towns of Gujarat where only India Posts reached.

On his selection, Mokariya told reporters, “I have been a dedicated party worker for four decades without any expectations. I am indeed happy that the party has picked me to contest the Rajya Sabha elections.”

The BJP's strength, which had won 99 seats in the 2017 elections, stands at 111 legislators in a House of 182, while that of the Congress has fallen from 77 to 65 now after several desertions. The Bharatiya Tribal Party has two MLAs, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has one and one Independent, Jignesh Mevani. As of now, two assembly seats are vacant.

Gujarat Congress chief spokesperson Manish Doshi told Hindustan Times, “We don’t have the numbers to nominate a candidate. If polling was to be held together for both the seats, we could still have a chance of retaining our one seat since the voting MLAs would be equally divided. In a separate ballot, all 180 (as of now) MLAs will vote for each seat.”

Meanwhile, BJP’s candidates are also a surprise since the party was expected to field Balwantsinh Rajput yet again but dropped him. Rajput had created an upset in 2017 when he quit the Congress to join the BJP and was immediately nominated against Ahmed Patel for Rajya Sabha and brought the latter, his mentor, close to a humiliating defeat. Patel had won that seat by one vote, apparently from Bharatiya Tribal Party chief Chhotubhai Vasava from Bharuch.