Gujarat: BJP’s Swarupji Thakor wins Vav bypoll in close contest

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Swarupji Thakor on Saturday won the Vav assembly by-election in Gujarat by defeating Congress candidate Gulabsinh Rajput by a slender margin of 2,353 votes.
According to the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, Thakor got 91,755 votes while Rajput got 89,402 votes.
Gujarat Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said the party has accepted defeat in a closely held contest where Rajput lost by around 1,300 votes.
Independent candidate Mavji Patel, who had contested after being denied the BJP ticket, secured 27,173 votes.
The by-election, which recorded a 70.55% voter turnout on November 13, was necessitated after sitting Congress MLA Geniben Thakor was elected to Lok Sabha earlier this year from Banaskantha constituency.
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Voting was conducted across 321 polling booths in 192 polling stations, with 3.10 lakh voters – 1.61 lakh men and 1.49 lakh women – eligible to exercise their franchise.
The constituency’s demographic makeup includes approximately 83,000 voters from the Thakor community, 50,000 from the Chaudhary community, 43,000 Dalits, 25,000 Maldharis (OBC), and 18,000 Brahmins.
The electoral battle gained significant attention as it was the first major contest in the region after Congress’s victory in the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat, under which the Vav Assembly segment falls.
Thakor’s victory comes after his unsuccessful attempt in the 2022 assembly election, where he had lost to Geniben Thakor, who had won the Vav seat twice in a row, including a notable victory against BJP strongman and assembly speaker Shankar Chaudhary in the 2017 assembly election.