Ahmedabad:
The ruling BJP in Gujarat has won all the four Assembly seats where by-elections were held along with the Lok Sabha polls. With this, the tally of the ruling party now stands at 104 in the 182-member state assembly. Final results of the bypolls came Friday morning though the counting of votes started Thursday.
By-elections were held on the assembly segments of Dhrangadhra, Manavadar, Unjha and Jamnagar (Rural), which fall under Lok Sabha constituencies of Surendranagar, Porbandar, Mehsana, and Jamnagar, respectively.
BJP candidate Parsotam Sabariya won from Dhrangadhra, defeating Congress candidate Dinesh Patel by a margin of 34,280 votes.
In Jamnagar (rural), Raghavji Patel won by a margin of 33,022 votes against Congress candidate Jayantibhai Sabhaya.
BJP candidate Jawahar Chavda won from Manavadar by defeating Congress nominee Arvind Ladani by a margin of 9,759 votes.
BJP’s Ashaben Patel won the Unjha seat by a margin of 23,072 votes against Congress candidate Kantibhai Patel, as per final results updated Friday on the Election Commissions website.
By-elections were necessitated after sitting Congress MLAs on these seats switched sides and joined the BJP.
Three of the four sitting MLAs, who had resigned to join the BJP, were fielded by the ruling party on their respective seats.
Raghavji Patel of Jamnagar (Rural) had joined the BJP ahead of the 2017 assembly elections in Gujarat but was defeated in the polls that year by Congresss Vallabh Dharaviya. The BJP fielded him again this time from the same seat which he managed to win. Assembly by-elections and Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat were held in April.
