Key Constituencies in second phase of Gujarat elections: Godhra faces unemployment

Key Constituencies in second phase of Gujarat elections:  Godhra

Godhra faces unemployment

By Deepak Parvatiyar*

Last time when CK Raulji contested from Godhra, he had won on a Congress ticket by a thin margin of 2868 votes against his nearest BJP rival Pravinshin Chauhan. Raulji, a five-term Godhra MLA, is contesting this time on a BJP ticket against Congress’s Rajendrasinh Patel. Last time when Rajendrasinh had contested the Godhra seat – as a Congress candidate in 2002, he had lost to BJP’s Haresh Bhatt. Thereafter since 2007, Raulji had won the seat for the Congress. Muslims, who make up between one-fifth and one-fourth of Godhra’s electorate of 2.5 lakh, had consistently voted for him and it is to be seen whether they still support him after his move to join the BJP. However earlier too he was in the BJP and won the seat twice as a BJP candidate in the 1990s. Before that he had even won the seat as a Janata Dal candidate in 1990.

The BJP last won Godhra in 2002 and is pinning its hopes in the induction of Raulji.

It may be mentioned that Godhra had caught the national attention after unknown miscreants set the Sabarmati Express on fire on the morning of 27 February, 2002, in which 59 people including Kar Sevaks who were travelling from Ayodhya had died. This had triggered widespread communal riots in Gujarat. Over 15 years of the incident, the Muslims of this town now term the incident as distant memory and want to move ahead. The major issue here is of unemployment. Many were left unemployed here when General Moptors shut down its plant in Halol which is about an hour’s distance from Godhra. The residents also rue at the closure of several small scale units in the constituency “because of the GST”.

Godhra is a place where SardarVallabhbhai Patel had met Mahatma Gandhi for the very first time in 1917.  

*The writer is a senior journalist