In Gujarat, a bypoll brings a quiet succession war out in the open

For the first time since the 2008 delimitation exercise carved out the Manjalpur Assembly seat in Vadodara, the constituency in Gujarat will go into the July 30 bypolls without Yogesh Patel’s name attached to it.

The veteran BJP leader, who won the constituency in three landslide victories and held an unbroken run of eight terms in the Gujarat Assembly across his political career, passed away on June 2, necessitating the bypoll and leaving behind a seat so thoroughly identified with him that his own party now faces an unfamiliar question — who inherits Manjalpur after Yogesh Patel?

For the BJP, the July 30 by-election is not just about retaining a seat that has been among its safest in Gujarat. Despite his strong electoral record in Manjalpur, Patel’s candidature had thrown up a dilemma for the BJP in the 2022 Assembly polls. The party had bent one of its own unwritten rules to renominate Patel, aged 77 at the time, for an eighth consecutive term despite increasingly discouraging candidates above 75 years of age.

Patel’s name was the last among all 182 BJP candidates announced ahead of the 2022 polls — a reflection of the internal churn and competing ambitions within the Vadodara city unit. When reporters pressed then state BJP chief C R Paatil on the exception made for Patel, he brushed the question aside. Senior BJP leaders recall that the nomination came as a “surprise” given Patel had “not even figured in the Parliamentary Board’s original reckoning”. But the decision proved fruitful for BJP and Patel, whose winning margin had swelled with every election since 2012, culminating in a majority of over a lakh votes in 2022.

That capacity to bend the party to his will was built on a direct line to the state leadership in Gandhinagar and, as senior leaders say, “even to the Prime Minister”, and an annual “maha aarti” at his Shivratri Yatra in Vadodara that no sitting chief minister has ever skipped.

Patel’s dominance in Manjalpur — a seat he won three times after earlier representing Raopura, from which Manjalpur was carved out in 2008, five times — went beyond electoral politics. Though a member of the Leuva Patidar community, Patel’s stature had a flattening effect on caste politics within the constituency as his personal following cut across community lines in a seat with no single dominant group. Other Backward Classes (OBCs) form the largest bloc in Manjalpur, followed by Patidars, alongside sizeable Brahmin, Vaniya and Marathi populations.

“With Yogesh Kaka now gone, factional balancing is not possible any more. The demand for a Patidar successor is likely to collide with rival camps pushing OBC or other upper-caste contenders… We have already seen aspiring candidates starting to push their case as the ‘most suitable’ on social media, even though the party is yet to make any decision,” a senior BJP leader said.

A high-stakes battle

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With the July 30 bypoll fast approaching, the local BJP unit has already entered a high-stakes lobbying war. For years, internal party factions in Vadodara suppressed their ambitions for the seat because challenging “Kaka” was out of the question.

Although the BJP is yet to make an announcement, Vadodara city BJP president Jayprakash Soni and senior leader Smruti Bhave — both with RSS backgrounds — are seen as frontrunners along with former city party chief Vijay Shah, who was also in contention for the seat in 2022. Other aspirants, too, have begun individual campaigns to make the pitch for the ticket.

Patel, however, didn’t start in the saffron fold. He began his journey with the Congress in the 1970s, moved to Maneka Gandhi’s Sanjay Vichar Manch in the 1980s, shifted to the Janata Dal with which he won his first electoral contest in 1990, and finally joined the BJP in 1995.

A self-confessed Shiva devotee, Patel spearheaded the Vadodara’s legendary annual Shivratri Yatra and successfully pushed for the iconic 111-foot Shiva statue in Sursagar Lake to be coated in gold — an unfinished project that many in the party believe was among the factors that earned him an eighth ticket.

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His political reach also extended far beyond state lines through a decades-long, personal bond with former Union minister Maneka Gandhi. The two fiercely campaigned for each other across elections, and their sibling-like closeness was felt deeply when Gandhi traveled to Vadodara to attend the prayer meeting after Patel’s demise and paid a tearful final tribute.

He was also a rebel when it suited his constituency. In 2018, he openly cornered his own government, protesting alongside other party MLAs over what they alleged was the neglect of central Gujarat in Cabinet representation — ultimately earning him a berth as Minister of State. Patel cultivated an image of an accessible leader who spoke bluntly, including against his own government when civic issues remained unresolved.

The Congress, meanwhile, sees an opening that has not existed in Manjalpur for more than two decades. Even though the BJP’s organisational machinery remains formidable, with Vadodara one of its strongest urban bastions, the Congress believes Patel’s absence offers an opportunity to convert the seat into a contest.

The Assembly constituency, today, is devoid of its most influential leaders — the deaths of Congress leaders Chirag Zaveri and Chinnam Gandhi, followed by Patel within a relatively short span, mean that Manjalpur’s political landscape is almost certain to present a new face when it votes on July 30, with the nomination deadline on July 13.

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The BJP is still dealing with the after-effects of its “no repeat candidates” experiment in parts of the constituency during the April municipal corporation elections, in which several influential local leaders were dropped in favour of new faces. The party won comfortably, but not without leaving behind bruised ambitions and unresolved factional tensions, making Manjalpur a delicate choice. With the bypoll doubling as an early test before the 2027 Assembly election, the BJP needs more than a winner — it needs a successor the organisation can rally behind.