Shaktisinh Gohil resigns as Gujarat Congress chief amid bypoll debacle

Ahmedabad, June 23 (IANS) Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil stepped down from his position of state unit chief of the grand old party on Monday, accepting moral responsibility for the party's defeat in Gujarat bypolls in Kadi and Visavadar.

Addressing the media in Ahmedabad, Gohil announced that he had submitted his resignation to Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge.

“The bypoll results did not meet our expectations. As the state president, I accept full moral responsibility for this outcome and have sent my resignation to the party high command,” he said.

Gohil, a Rajya Sabha MP and veteran leader, was appointed Gujarat Congress president in June 2023, ahead of the 2024 general elections.

His tenure, however, saw little electoral revival for the party in a state it once dominated. The trigger for his resignation came from the twin defeats in the Visavadar and Kadi by-elections, where the Congress candidates fared poorly.

In Visavadar, a seat historically associated with Congress influence, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Gopal Italia defeated BJP's Kirit Patel by a margin of 17,554 votes. The Congress candidate barely made a dent, finishing a distant third and signaling a complete erosion of its grassroots connect in the region.

Meanwhile, in Kadi (SC-reserved), BJP's Rajendra Chavda registered a landslide victory, defeating former Congress MLA Ramesh Chavda by a whopping 39,452 votes.

Rajendra polled 99,742 votes, while the Congress contender managed only 60,290, failing to mount any serious challenge in what was once considered a competitive seat.

Together, the results reflect a broader trend of the Congress ceding political ground, first to the BJP, and now increasingly to the AAP in certain pockets of Gujarat.

Gopal Italia's win in Visavadar, in particular, is being viewed as a symbolic turning point, underlining AAP’s growing relevance and Congress’s organisational collapse in Saurashtra.

Gohil’s resignation, while expected, also raises larger questions about the party’s direction in Gujarat.

--IANS

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