Who will they field? Caste-based equations of Kadi bypoll headache for BJP, Congress

Two seats in Gujarat – Kadi and Visavadar – are up for bypolls soon. For both giant players in Gujarat, BJP and Congress, the Kadi seat is proving to be a headache.

The rural tickets, often dominated by caste-equations, has complicated the process of awarding candidature for both parties.

Kadi seat came into existence as a Scheduled Caste reserved seat in 2012.

In 2012, Congress’s Ramesh Chavda defeated BJP’s Heetu Kanodia.

In 2017, BJP’s Karshan Solanki defeated Congress' sitting MLA Ramesh Chavda.

In 2025,BJP's Karshan Solanki defeated Congress' Praveen Parmar.

The seat fell vacant due to the untimely death of sitting MLA Karshan Solanki in early 2025, for which elections have now been announced.

Now, both the parties are careful that no community gets upset and is left out.

Total 13 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes in the assembly. In the results of December 2022, out of 13 seats, 9 male and 4 female MLAs became members. Out of which 2 were from Congress and 11 from BJP, out of 11 from BJP, 2 MLAs from Rohit community and 1 from EBC and 8 were from Wankar community.

In the Kadi reserved seat, both BJP and Congress gave tickets to Rohit Samaj candidates in 2017 and in 2022.

In 2025, both the parties will have to be careful about who they pick, and not hurt the sentiments of different castes.

According to the information received, in the 2022 assembly elections, as many as 87 contenders contested from BJP for Kadi seat, but at the last minute, surprisingly, Late Karshan Solanki was repeated.

Voting for Kadi and Visavdar seats will be held on June 19, and the vote counting will take place on June 23.

Singer Kajal Mehria, Late Karshan Solanki’s son Piyush Solanki, and other contenders for Kadi seat have filed their claims before the observers for BJP.

While former MLA Ramesh Chavda, Praveen Parmar, and other contenders from Congress have expressed their desire to contest the elections.