How ‘giant slayer’ Geniben Thakor battled odds, broke Congress’ 10-year jinx in Gujarat

By winning the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat on June 4, Congress not only put brakes on the BJP’s uninterrupted streak of bagging all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state since 2014, but also registered its first victory in the western state in a decade.

Geniben Thakor fought against odds and broke the jinx for the Congress by defeating BJP’s Rekhaben Chaudhary by a margin of 30,406 votes.

Significant win

Banaskantha was among the 14 seats where the BJP did not field its sitting MPs and Chaudhary replaced sitting MP Parbatbhai Patel, who had won in 2019 with a substantial margin of 3,68,000 votes over Congress’ Parthi Bhatol.

The Congress’ win is significant, especially when the party was in a disarray due to desertions of key leaders in the run up to the polls. While veteran leaders like Arjun Modhwadia and CJ Chavda switched to the BJP earlier this year, the party’s Ahmedabad East nominee Rohan Gupta withdrew his candidature and joined the BJP in April.

Even though the Congress won 11 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat in 2009, the subsequent polls in 2014 and 2019 saw it drawing a blank. Banaskantha, which the Congress won in 2009, has been a BJP stronghold since the Grand Old Party lost it in 2014.

“We have been winning all seats for the past two terms. We could have repeated the same, but unfortunately due to some dissent within the party we couldn’t achieve the target this time. We will examine where we went wrong and rectify it,” said CR Patil, BJP Gujarat chief on June 6 while addressing a press conference.

‘Giant slayer’ Geniben

Congress’ Geniben, an OBC candidate, shot to fame after defeating Shankar Chaudhary, BJP candidate and chairman of Banas Dairy, by a margin of over 6,600 votes in the 2017 Assembly polls.

She was christened a ‘giant slayer’ after she defeated Choudhary who is considered the most influential leader in the Banaskantha, a district known for its cooperative diaries.

In the 2022 Assembly polls, Geniben again won from Vav against BJP’s Swarupji Thakor in an election where the Congress recorded its worst electoral performance by winning only 17 seats.

Challenges in nomination filing

Geniben’s Lok Sabha debut, however, was full of challenges. She came under a lot of pressure to get her nomination cancelled in March this year after multiple BJP workers of Banaskantha filed complaints, alleging irregularities in her nomination form.

“They tried to pressure the district collector through a lawyer to get my form rejected, but thankfully the election officer did not allow that to happen,” said Geniben.

“There were other incidents too. Once some BJP workers in police uniform disrupted our campaign and threatened our workers. I had to rush to the spot, cutting short my campaign at another location. Later we filed an FIR against the four men,” Geniben told The Federal.

“Not just in Banaskantha, BJP workers raised objections during filing of nomination and attempts made to get the forms cancelled but on 18 seats. But all forms were patiently scrutinised by our team and re-submitted,” Gujarat Congress Pradesh Committee president Shaktisinh Gohil said.

Gohil said the Congress team in Banaskantha had to submit Geniben’s form twice as three complaints were filed against her nomination form.

Funding hiccups

“It was quite a turmoil till April when her nominations were finally accepted. But then, the party decided it will not be able to fund its candidate in Banaskantha. The same decision was taken for Porbandar, Valsad and Surendrangar. However, Geniben never complained and gave her all to contest this election,” added Gohil.

The decision was taken by the Congress leadership in March after the Centre froze ₹115.321 crore in the party’s 11 bank accounts over an Income Tax demand of ₹210 crore. The Congress had held a press conference in March this year and announced that that the party does not have money for poll campaigning.

“We might not be able to support our candidates on all seats, but the party has decided that it will field candidates from all seats nonetheless,” Gohil had told the media in March.

Crowdfunding comes to Geniben’s rescue

Geniben, like three other candidates of the Congress, had to crowdfund her election campaign. She widely circulated a QR code across the state unlike the other three candidates who accepted direct bank transfer as directed by the party.

“I even accepted small amounts donated by women mostly during the campaigning. In one village, a woman supporter donated ₹2 which was the smallest donation we received,” she shares.

Geniben managed to collect around ₹15 lakh for her campaign through the crowdfunding initiative, which was the lowest amount to be spent by a candidate for the campaigns in Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat in 2024.

Thakor community clout

Ahmedabad-based political analyst Gautam Sah says Geniben’s win can be credited to her strong grassroots connection and the significant support she received from the Thakor community, which form about 60 per cent of the vote bank in Banaskantha.

“Geniben’s win becomes even more important when we consider that neither BJP nor her own party Congress expected her to pull off the big win. A very confident BJP dropped its sitting MP in Banaskantha and chose Rekha Chaudhary, a first timer as its candidate. The Congress chose to not fund Geniben’s campaign as it expected it to be a lost seat along with Porbandar, Surendranagar and Valsad,” says Sah.

“This is also a remarkable win as Geniben saw to it that voting percentage is higher in Banaskantha. While BJP ran a caste-based campaign, she found her core voters amongst women and made sure they come out and vote. It’s the women voters who made the difference in Banaskantha. In fact, their percentage this time is more than male voters,” added Sah.