With Eye on Breaching BJP Fortress, India's AAP Names Its State Chief Candidate for Gujarat Polls

Elections in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, are scheduled to take place in two phases - on December 1 and 5. The results of the high-profile polls will be announced on December 8.

India's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday named Isudan Gadhvi, a former television journalist, as its state chief candidate for the upcoming Gujarat elections.

Gadhvi is the national joint general secretary of the party and one of its most prominent faces in the state.

Since joining the AAP in June last year, the 40-year-old politician has campaigned vigorously in Gujarat state, addressing rallies and holding roadshows across the length and breadth of the state.

His candidature was announced by AAP leader and Delhi state chief Arvind Kejriwal, who claimed that under Gadhvi's leadership, his party would oust the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from there.

Kejriwal revealed that Gadhvi was picked as AAP's candidate after he won 73 percent of the vote in a party survey that was conducted to find who should be its face in the Gujarat polls.

"At a time when it seems sure that the AAP will form the government, today we are not announcing the CM candidate of the AAP but announcing the CM for the next Gujarat government. Last week we invited public opinion, and 16,48,500 responses were received and 73 percent of them named Isudanbhai Gadhvi," Kejriwal said in a televised address to party workers.

The AAP held a similar survey in Punjab earlier this year before declaring Bhagwant Mann its state chief candidate. He subsequently took over as head of the Punjab government after the party secured a landslide victory in the state.

Coming back to Gujarat, the state has been regarded as a BJP fortress since the 1990s.

The federally governing party has been in power in the state for the last 27 years and is looking to win a seventh straight term in Gujarat.

The Gujarat polls are also considered a prestige battle for PM Modi and federal Home Minister Amit Shah, both of whom hail from the state.

Kejriwal's party, meanwhile, is looking to halt the BJP's juggernaut and hoist its flag in Gujarat after Delhi and Punjab.

Despite the AAP's mega blitz in Gujarat, the goal of dislodging the BJP from the state is regarded as an uphill task, considering it failed to open its account in the last assembly elections held in 2017.

In the outgoing state legislature, the BJP has 111 lawmakers and Congress has 61, while the AAP has none.