Ahmedabad: The AMC elections have thrown up a peculiar paradox over the past 25 years. The BJP has consistently failed to win from the ward where its state and city offices are located, while the Gujarat Congress has been unable to secure even a single seat from the ward that houses its headquarters. The BJP’s state office was based in Khanpur for many years. About a decade ago, the party relocated its state headquarters to Kamalam in Koba at Gandhinagar. However, the Ahmedabad city BJP office continues to operate from the Khanpur location. Many prominent BJP leaders have held meetings at JP Chowk in front of the party’s Khanpur office.According to AMC sources, the city was divided into 64 wards between 2000 and 2010. The BJP’s Khanpur office fell within the old Raikhad ward during this period, and the party’s councillors never managed to win from there. Instead, Congress panels consistently took the ward. In the 2000 AMC election, three Congress corporators won from the Raikhad ward, and Congress came to power. Notably, Anisabegam Mirza, one of the Congress corporators elected from the Raikhad ward, went on to serve as mayor of Ahmedabad from April 16, 2003, to Oct 15, 2005.After 2010, the number of wards in the AMC reduced from 64 to 48 due to delimitation and four councillors were assigned to each ward. The old Raikhad ward was dissolved, and its area was merged into the newly formed Jamalpur ward. The BJP’s fortunes did not change with the new boundaries. In the 2010 election, a Congress panel won from the Jamalpur ward. In 2015, three Congress councillors and one independent candidate were elected. In the 2021 election, a panel of four AIMIM corporators swept the Jamalpur ward, but the BJP still could not secure a seat.An equally paradoxical trend has played out in the Paldi ward in western Ahmedabad, where the Gujarat Congress’s main office, Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan, is located. Paldi ward has not elected a single Congress councillor in the last five AMC elections. Even in 2000, when Congress came to power in the AMC, a panel of three BJP councillors was elected from the Paldi ward. Here, the BJP continued its winning streak in 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2021 elections, keeping the Congress out of its home turf.
