AAP's CM face Isudan Gadhvi loses to BJP rival by 18,000 votes

Khambhalia (Guj): Isudan Gadhvi, the Aam Aadmi Party's CM face in Gujarat, lost in the Assembly election from Khambhalia on Thursday by more than 18,000 votes as his BJP rival came back from behind to clinch the seat.

Gadhvi was leading at the end of the fourth round over Congress's incumbent MLA Vikram Madam, while the BJP's Mulubhai Bera was trailing in the third place.

But Bera surpassed his rivals in the later rounds of vote counting.

Khambhalia emerged as one of the high-profile seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections after the AAP fielded Gadhvi, its CM face, from this constituency in the Saurashtra region.

A former TV news anchor, Gadhvi was born and brought up in Khambhalia. But social equations in this Ahir-dominated seat probably did not favour him as his own Gadhvi community is numerically not significant in the area.

On the other hand, both Madam of the Congress and the BJP's Bera come from the Ahir community. Madam had also enjoyed the support of the Muslim community which constitutes the second-largest voting bloc, but this time around it seemed to have favoured the AAP.

In the last several decades, no non-Ahir candidate has won the seat.

The BJP had won the seat in 2007 and 2012 but lost to Congress in a bypoll in 2014. Congress retained it in 2017.