The decision of former Chief Minister Vijay Rupani to opt out of the electoral race has helped the party leadership take its decision easily. Comprising chiefly of upper caste Hindu voters and people involved in trading and white collared jobs, Rajkot West has been a BJP bastion since 1967. Since the Jan Sangh days. M P Jadeja had won the seat as Bharatiya Jan Sangh nominee in 1967. It was later represented in 1972 by Pradummansinh Jadeja, 1975 – Arvindbhai Maniyar and Manibhai Ranpara in 1980. In other words, the BJP has not lost its seat for the last 55 years.
In February 2002, the seat was represented by Narendra Modi. This time the saffron party has reposed faith in Dr Darshita Shah, a well-known social worker in the region. For a long time, the seat was a pocket-borrow constituency for veteran party leader Vajubhai Vala. Modi had shown enough respect and trust in Vala and retained him as Assembly Speaker during his tenure as the state Chief Minister. After Modi shifted to Delhi in May 2014 as the Prime Minister, Vala was made Karnataka Governor. In his letter to state unit chief C R Patil, former CM Vijay Rupani said he would like to opt-out of the electoral race. Rupani was Chief Minister from 2016 to September 2021, when he moved out, making way for the incumbent Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. In Rajkot, what matters most is development. It has been rated as the 22nd fastest-growing city in the world. Rajkot is the fourth largest city in Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara. The city is the centre of the Saurashtra region and India’s 35th-largest urban agglomeration. Notably, are as many as four assembly segments covering the town and the outskirts. Besides Rajkot West, there are Rajkot East, Rajkot South and Rajkot Rural.Saurashtra is politically vital and comprises 11 districts, and this region, with neighbouring desert areas of Kutch, is a perennially drought-prone region. Initially, the Rs 12,000 crore Saurashtra Narmada Avatarana Irrigation Yojana (SAUNI) project was initiated by Narendra Modi as Chief Minister in May 2012. Took mega plans and steps to fill up 115 dams of the region with excess runoff water of the Sardar Sarovar Dam across the Narmada river with a network of pipelines and then supply it for drinking and irrigation.
In March 2022, a group of journalists who visited the Saurashtra region were told that the arid Saurashtra and parts of the Kutch region would soon have ‘acchey din’ in more than one sense as the much ambitious SAUNI project is set to supplement floor water to about 115 existing dams. These dams have been selected based on the deficit storage study for the last ten years. Phase I works started in April 2014 when Narendra Modi was still the chief minister of the western state. The projects sought to strengthen irrigation facilities in 166,000-acre areas of 16 reservoirs. This phase of work is already commissioned at a total cost of Rs 6473 crore. A mega greenfield airport is also coming up near Rajkot.
