Gujarat Assembly polls | BJP faces rebellion, protests as leaders who have been dropped/denied tickets are sulking

The ruling party faces issues in several seats as the local cadres and workers are sulking over the nominations. 

The ruling party, BJP, in Gujarat is grappling to pacify rebels in over a dozen seats as the party is bringing in new faces to replace old guards. 

Outgoing party MLA Madhu Srivastav from Vaghodia in Vadodara has resigned from the party after he was denied ticket from his pocket borough from where he has won six times. 

He is set to contest the Assembly polls as an independent candidate. He even refused to meet Harsh Sanghavi, Minister of the State for Home, who has been asked to manage Mr Srivastav and two other leaders who have been denied tickets and are now on warpath with the party. 

The BJP has so far declared nearly 166 candidates in which as many as 40 sitting legislators have been dropped including several top ministers in a bid to bring in new faces to cut down anti incumbency factor in the state. 

The party’s exercise to bring in new faces and also rope in large number of Congress turncoats have riled its own cadres and leaders who have held protests in their local areas, rushed to the party headquarters in Gandhinagar and even went to media publicly venting their anger towards the party leadership. 

While some of these disgruntled leaders have said they will make their next move after consulting supporters, former BJP MLA and the party’s known tribal face Harshad Vasava already filed his nomination papers on Friday as an independent from ST reserved Nandod seat. 

Mr Vasava is the president of Gujarat BJP’s Scheduled Tribe Morcha and represented the erstwhile Rajpipla seat between 2002 and 2007 and from 2007 to 2012.