Ahmedabad: Congress Chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday appointed Amit Chavda as its legislature party leader in Gujarat and Shailesh Parmar as the deputy leader. Chavda has served as the Gujarat Congress chief previously. The appointments were confirmed by All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary K C Venugopal through communication to Gujarat unit head Jagdish Thakor.
Venugopal, in the said communication, confirmed that the party president has approved the proposal for the nomination of Chavda as the leader and Parmar as the deputy leader of the Congress Legislature Party in the state. Chavda, 46, is a five-term legislator hailing from Anand district in central Gujarat. He served as the state Congress president between 2018 and 2021. Parmar, 53, won his fourth election last year from Ahmedabad's Danilimda seat, reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates, by defeating BJP's Naresh Vyas.
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The Gujarat Assembly secretariat had recently asked the opposition Congress to appoint its "authorized person" or leader in the House before January 19. As per rule, the opposition parties are supposed to appoint their respective leaders in the House within 30 days of the swearing-in of the newly-elected members of the Legislative Assembly.
In the Gujarat Assembly elections held in December 2022, Chavda won from the Anklav seat in Anand, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party's Gulabsinh Padhiyar. Members of the 15th Legislative Assembly in Gujarat were sworn in on December 19, 2022. The ruling BJP won 156 seats in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly in the polls last month, while the Congress finished a distant second with 17 seats. The Aam Aadmi Party won five seats, while three seats went to independents and one was bagged by the Samajwadi Party.
