Isudan Gadhvi nominated as AAP CM candidate for Gujarat polls

Kejriwal had urged people to contact the party through SMS, WhatsApp, voice mail and e-mail to give their views about who should be the CM candidate from the party in the state, which is currently being ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

New Delhi:Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has nominated Isudan Gadhvi as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) CM candidate for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections. The decision was reached on Friday on the basis of the opinion given by people of the state. The party supremo had urged the people of Gujarat to resister their choice by either SMS, WhatsApp, voice mail, or e-mail for the poll which concluded by 5 pm Thursday.

Isudan Gadhvi won the poll with a majority of 73% votes against state unit president Gopal Italia. Isudan is a former journalist and TV anchor, and had joined the Aam Aadmi Party in June 2021. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was also elected as the PM candidate through a similar poll. Gadhvi's rival, Gopal Italia had gained some recent limelight for mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"There is an atmosphere of change in Gujarat and people believe that AAP is going to form a government here," Kejriwal had said. "During the Punjab elections, we had asked people as to who should be the next chief minister. People named Bhagwant Mann by a huge majority. And as per the wishes of the public, we made him chief minister," Kejriwal had recalled.

The AAP Thursday announced its ninth list of 10 candidates for the Gujarat polls, taking the number of candidates whose names have been announced so far to 118. The Gujarat Assembly elections will be held in two phases on December 1 and 5, and the results will be declared on December 8, the Election Commission announced Thursday.

Of the 182 seats in the Legislative Assembly, 89 will go to polls in the first phase and 93 in the second. There are over 4.9 crore electors eligible to vote this year. There will be more than 51,000 polling stations set up, including more than 34,000 in rural areas. The much-awaited, high-stakes elections are seeing a three-cornered contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).