Ahmedabad: Campaigning for polls to 25 of 26 Lok Sabha seats and bypolls to five assembly constituencies ended in Gujarat at 6pm on Saturday, with voting scheduled for May 7.
The BJP's Mukesh Dalal has already won from Surat unopposed after the nomination of Congress' Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected over irregularities in the signature of proposers and other candidates withdrew.
Among the prominent candidates in the fray are Union Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, as well as his cabinet colleagues Mansukh Mandaviya and Parshottam Rupala from Porbandar and Rajkot, respectively.
During the campaign, the BJP had to face the ire of the Kshatriya community over a remark made by Rupala in Rajkot. He had claimed several rulers from the community had "roti and beti" (marriage and trade) relations with the British and other foreign invaders.
Rupala is up against former Congress MLA Paresh Dhanani, who had defeated him in the 2002 assembly polls. The Congress has fielded four sitting and eight former MLAs. It is contesting the polls in alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party. As part of the agreement, the Congress got 24 seats (including Surat), while the AAP has been given Bhavnagar and Bharuch.
Geniben Thakor, sitting MLA from Vava in Banaskantha district, has been fielded from Banaskantha against BJP's Rekha Chaudhary, making it the only seat in the state where the main contest is between two women.
The BJP's campaign, in a state considered its strongest base, was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. For the Congress, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi were among the star campaigners, along with Mallikarjun Kharge, who recently addressed a rally in Ahmedabad.
A host of senior leaders from the BJP and the Congress also took part in the campaign in the state, where the ruling party blanked out the grand old party in 2014 and 2019. These leaders included Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman for the BJP and Ashok Gehlot, Shashi Tharoor, Abhishek Sanghvi and Pawan Khera etc for the Congress.
The AAP has fielded sitting MLAs Chaitar Vasava from Bharuch and Umesh Makwana from Bhavnagar, and the Arvind Kejriwal-led party's campaign saw rallies by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann as well as senior leaders Sanjay Singh and Gopal Yadav.