Meet Isudan Gadhvi, AAP’s candidate for Gujarat CM’s post

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal on Friday announced Isudan Gadhvi as the party’s chief ministerial candidate for the next month’s Gujarat Assembly elections. Gadhvi, AAP’s national general secretary, was named on the basis of the opinion submitted to the party by the people of the state.

Besides Gadhvi, AAP’s state unit president Gopal Italia and general secretary Manoj Soratihya were in the race for the top post.

Also read: Gujarat polls SWOT analysis: Does AAP entry affect BJP and Congress?

Poll for CM candidate’s name

In a press conference in Ahmedabad, Kejriwal said the 40-year-old Gadhvi got as many as 73 per cent votes in a poll conducted by the party.

Last week, Kejriwal had urged people to contact the party through SMS, WhatsApp, voice mail and e-mail to give their views about who should be the CM candidate from the party in the state. At that time, Kejriwal had said, “During the Punjab elections, we had asked people as to who should be the next chief minister. People named Bhagwant Mann by a huge majority. And as per the wishes of the public, we made him chief minister.”

Gadhvi hails from a farmers’ family in Dwarka district’s Pipaliya village and belongs to the other backward castes, which account for 48 per cent of the state’s population.

Former media professional

AAP’s chief ministerial candidate is a former media professional and used to anchor a popular news show ‘Mahamanthan’ at VTV Gujarati.

Gadhvi began his journalism career with a popular Doordarshan show called ‘Yojana’. He then joined ETV Gujarati and was stationed in Porbandar from 2007 to 2011.

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He became known in the state when he exposed a Rs 150-crore scam of illegal deforestation in Dang and Kaparada talukas on his news show, forcing the Gujarat government to take action.

He joined VTV Gujarati in 2015 as the youngest channel head in Gujarati media. His show was popular in rural Gujarat, particularly among farmers.

Joined in 2021

Gadhvi joined the AAP in June 2021. Kejriwal had welcomed him into the party by saying that Gadhvi had made a “huge sacrifice of a promising career to clean the mess that the ruling party, together with the Congress, had created in Gujarat.”

Meanwhile, the AAP on Thursday announced its ninth list of 10 candidates for the Gujarat polls, taking the number of candidates whose names have been announced so far to 118.

Also read: AAP declares 22 more candidates for Gujarat assembly polls

Elections to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly will be held in two phases next month — on December 1 and 5, while votes will be counted on December 8.