Limbadi (Surendranagar): With its five assembly seats, Surendranagar has been BJP bastion for more than a decade. But this time, the ruling party may not be lucky enough to hold on to its dominance in this agrarian district — thanks to farm distress, the promised Narmada water not reaching the fields and also an energised Congress, which has given three out of five seats to the dominant Koli community.
At present, BJP is holding all the five seats: Wadhwan, Limbadi, Chotila, Dhrangadhra and SC reserved Dasada, the last taluka before the little Rann of Kutch.
“It is a very tough fight here in all the [five] seats. And the general mood is in favour of change,” said Krishnasinh Jadeja, who runs an eatery on the Limbadi highway.
Mr. Jadeja said agriculture distress because of lower prices of cotton was the main issue, and secondly, the government had failed to build canal networks to take the Narmada water to the fields.
“Our main crop is cotton here and this year there is good yield but poor prices. We are forced to sell at ₹800-900 per 20 kg, which does not even cover our production costs,” Mr. Jadeja said, as he explained how inputs like fertiliser, diesel, pesticides and labour costs have gone up while output costs have come down.
He has laid 7-km pipeline to draw Narmada water from the branch canal to his farm. He runs the motor pump on tractor to pump the water because normal diesel engines fail to draw water with adequate force.
With 35 acre land, farmers like Mr. Jadeja can afford to lay long pipelines and run the motor pump on tractor but not other farmers with smaller land holding. Thus the Narmada water flowing in the branch and distributory channels in the hinterlands is helping only the big and resourceful farmers while the smaller ones get bypassed.
From Limbadi, the Congress candidate is 78-year-old Somabhai Patel, a seasoned grassroots leader who has been a four-time MP and two-time MLA in his five-decade-old career with the BJP and Congress.
“Modi wave is gone and people have realised that all the promises were just talking points. Farmers are crying because they are not getting proper prices for cotton.” Mr. Patel told The Hindu from his election office on the Ahmedabad-Rajkot highway in Limbadi.
Mr. Patel is pitted against Kiritsinh Rana, BJP’s sitting legislator who had lost to Mr. Patel in 2012; but after wining the Assembly poll, Mr. Patel resigned as MLA to retain his Lok Sabha membership as he was a sitting MP then.
“You can bet with me that we will win at least four seats in the district,” Mr. Patel said, exuding confidence rarely seen on the face of Congress leaders in Gujarat these days.
The ruling party, sensing the challenge, dropped four sitting legislators in the district, including senior minister Jayantibhai Kavadia from Dhrangadhra seat.
In Wadhwan, BJP has dropped Varsha Doshi to field Dhanjibhai Patel, a local industrialist and the third-richest candidate of Gujarat with assets over ₹113 crore. In Dhrangadhra, the party has fielded a new face, Jerambhai Sonagra, while from SC reserved Dasada, it has brought in Assembly speaker Ramanlal Vora from Idar. In Chotila too, the BJP has dropped sitting legislator and parliamentary secretary Shamjibhai Chauhan.
“Even though the BJP is strong here traditionally, it is a very tight contest this time. Even in Wadhwan seat, I would say Congress stands 60% chance to win because the Congress candidate is a grassroots leader while the BJP candidate is very rich but a novice,” said Pradhyumansinh Padharia, who run an ice cream parlour in Surendranagar.
