Updated on Feb 5, at 3.21 p.m.

After resigning from his post, former Congress MLA Chirag Patel joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Feb 4 in the presence of state BJP chief CR Patil.

Paatil said, “If the country is ‘Ram-may’, why should Khambhat be left out? It takes guts to resign from the post of MLA.”

Notably, earlier on Feb 4, around 2,500 Congress workers from the Borsad assembly constituency joined the BJP in the presence of Patil.

Updated on Feb 5, at 1 p.m.

After the exit of AAP’s Bhupat Bhayani, a wave of resignations started in Congress.

Chirag Patel, a member of parliament (MLA) from Khambhat of the Indian National Congress (INC), has resigned in a meeting that was scheduled for today.

Patel, who won with 43.53% of votes in the Gujarat Assembly election in 2022, is planning to exit the party before the upcoming elections.

Who is Chirag Patel? 

The INC has lost its strong MLA as Chirag Patel, a first-time MLA who won Anand’s Khambhat taluka, usually a BJP-dominated seat. In the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections, Patel defeated BJP candidate Mayur Raval by 3711 votes in Khambhat.

The MLA is now rumoured to join the BJP.

Reacting to the news of resignation from the Congress MLA, Rushikesh Patel, a BJP spokesperson reportedly said that the lapses in leadership in Congress has attracted the resignation. He also said that it seems that the Congress has given up on Gujarat. “It is just a usual process (for Congress), and we have not invited anyone,” said the BJP spokesperson.

Out of 182 seats in Gujarat, the BJP has 156, the INC had 17 which now will be 16, and others stand with 9 seats as of now.

With Patel’s exit, the 182-seat Gujarat Assembly will be left with 2 vacant seats, for which bypolls will probably take place along with the Lok Sabha general elections in 2024.

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