The ruling BJP on Wednesday fielded a former legislator Babu Desai from North Gujarat and a political dynast Kesridevsinh Zala as two Rajya Sabha candidates besides the External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar for the three seats in Gujarat.
The ruling party will bag all three seats since the Opposition Congress is short of numbers and therefore decided to not field any candidate for the biennale Rajya Sabha seats.
The EAM Jaishankar has been repeated by the party while Mr. Desai and Mr. Zala are new candidates in place of outgoing members Jugal Thakor and Dinesh Anavadiya.
Former MLA Babu Desai was elected to the State Assembly from 2007 to 2012 from Kankrej seat in Banaskantha district. He comes from the cattle breeder community Rabari and is in the OBC category in the State. Based in Ahmedabad, Mr. Desai is a prominent realty player in the city.
Another candidate the ruling party has picked up is 42-year-old Kesridevsinh Zala, a member of the erstwhile Wankaner princely family in the Saurashtra region. His late father Digvijaysinh was a Member of Parliament and was the Union Environment Minister in the Indira Gandhi government in Congress.
This is Mr. Zala’s first electoral innings. Though he is active locally in his area, he has not contested any election in the State.
It appears that the ruling party wanted to send a Kshatriya leader from Saurashtra and he was picked up because of the political background of his family.
