Ahmedabad, 25/10: With dates of Gujarat Assembly elections likely to be announced post-Diwali vacation, the ruling BJP has started its exercise to zero in on the final list of candidates for 182 Assembly seats.
Union home minister Amit Shah has been holding marathon meetings with party leaders for the past two days to discuss the probable candidates. Shah is said to have informally told reporters after one of these meetings in Vadodara that the party will field 25 per cent of new faces.
However, if BJP sources are to be believed, the party is likely to come up with “an unprecedented list” of candidates. They said that nearly 60-70 seats (about 30-40%), out of 182, are likely to be given to new faces and at least 25-30 MLAs out of 99, the party won in 2017, will not be repeated. Some of those who are not going to be repeated were ministers in the Vijay Rupani government.