Prominent Gujarat diamond trader Mahesh Savani joins Aam Aadmi Party

THE next Assembly elections in Gujarat are still sometime away but the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is aiming to emerge the main alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seems to be strengthening its support base fast.

Prominent diamond trader and social worker Mahesh Savani from Surat in the western Indian state on Sunday (27) joined the AAP. Earlier this month, vernacular journalist Isudhan Gadhvi joined the party in the presence of its chief and the chief minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal.

Savani’s joining the AAP is considered significant owing to changing political dynamics in Surat, where the AAP wiped out the Congress, the main opposition party, in the recently held municipal corporation elections and emerged as the opposition to the BJP with 27 seats. The AAP’s impressive success on electoral debut is largely attributed to the growing alienation of the Patidar community from both the BJP and Congress in the diamond city of Gujarat.

AAP’s Gujarat chief Gopal Italia also hails from Gujarat and belongs to the Patidar community.

Kejriwal visited Ahmedabad in Gujarat earlier this month following the AAP's performance in the local body polls and inaugurated the party's headquarters in Gujarat. He also announced that the AAP will contest in all 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly next year. Before his arrival to the city, he said Gujarat will change.