Morva Hadaf

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.

Assembly constituency

Jinxed?

Sachin Sharma, Dec 3, 2022: The Times of India

AHMEDABAD: Since it came into being, the Morva Hadaf assembly constituency in the Panchmahal district has never seen an MLA complete a full term. It has seen two general assembly elections since 2012 and as many by-elections. The seat also registered deaths of two elected candidates, a mother and a son, in 2012 and 2017 respectively.

In 2012, even as ballots were being counted for the seat reserved for scheduled tribes, Congress candidate Savita Khant collapsed and was rushed to Vadodara for treatment. She slipped into a coma and later passed away. Between her collapse and death, the results for the seat were announced, and she had won by 11,289 votes.

The by-election for the post was held in2013 and Khant’s son Bhupendrasinh contested from the Congress against BJP’s Nimisha Suthar. Many had expected Bhupendrasinh to win due to the perceived sympathy wave and a strong Congress vote base, but Suthar won the election with a margin of over 17,000 votes.

Bhupendrasinh did not find favour with the Congress in 2017. In a decision that raised many eyebrows, Congress left the seat for the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) in a seat-sharing arrangement. Peeved, Bhupendrasinh decided to contest as an independent and won by 4,366 votes. The BJP also did not field its sitting MLA Suthar and instead gave a ticket to Vikramsinh Dindor who finished second.

Bhupendrasinh landed in a controversy when questions were raised regarding his caste certificate. After a drawn-out legal battle, he was disqualified as an MLA in 2019.

Bhupendrasinh died in January 2021 after a prolonged illness. Another by-election was held for the seat, with Suthar in the fray again from the BJP and Suresh Katara contesting from the Congress. Suthar won by a margin of over 45,000 votes. This time, the Congress has again turned to the Khant family and fielded Snehlata Khant, wife of Bhupendrasinh’s brother Govind Khant. When asked if the unfortunate deaths of her family members after they won the polls bothered her, Snehlata said she did not hesitate when asked to contest the election. “My mother-inlaw’s death in 2012 was God’s wish. Stressed out over his election being challenged, my brother-in-law died,” she said.

“The people trusted us twice, and we will stand by them. There is a lot of work to be done in the constituency, and we want to take it up,” she said.

Bhupendrasinh’s father, Vechat Khant, said happiness and sorrow keep following each other. “It is a part of the cycle of life; we have to continue doing our duty,” he said.