Gujarat Assembly elections 2022: BJP candidate Kaushik Vekariya defeated his Congress rival Paresh Dhanani by a margin of 46,657 at the Amreli assembly seat. The seat comes under the Amreli district in Gujarat and has a sizeable number of Patidar voters. This assembly seat represents three segments namely Amreli city, Amreli Taluka and Vdia Taluka. According to data, Patidar voters account for more than half the total voters at this constituency.
Additionally, 15% of the population in the constituency is Koli and belongs to the OBC category. The remaining communities are Muslims, Dalits, and upper castes. With the exception of Amreli Town, the constituency is primarily rural.
ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2022: FULL COVERAGE
Candidates in the fray for 2022 polls
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) battled hard to turn the table at this seat as the party got drubbing by Congress in the last elections.This time, the BJP fielded its district unit chief Kaushik Vekariya from the seat, whereas, the Congress party decided to go with its sitting MLA Paresh Dhanani. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) trusted Ravi Dhanani to pose a serious threat to his rival candidates.
A look at the 2017 Assembly elections
In the Assembly elections 2017, Congress’s Paresh Dhanani defeated BJP’s Bavkubhai Undhad by a margin of 12,029 votes. Dhanani had received a total of 87,032 votes with a vote share of 51.25%.
On the other hand, Bavkubhai Undhad had received 75,003 votes with a vote share of 44.17%. It should be noted here that BJP candidates won from Amreli from 1985 to 2002 before the Congress succeeded in ending their domination in 2007.
During the last elections, the Amreli constituency had 2.68 lakh registered voters, at the voting percentage was recorded at 63.33%. The polling at the Amreli constituency was held on December 1, while the counting of votes took place on December 8, 2022.
