Gujarat's city of Surat is famous for its diamonds and the diamond merchants who call the city home have been important, politically speaking -- not only because of the vote bank that they represent, but because they are a significant source of political funding.
In 2017, the Congress campaigned hard to win the votes of Surat's diamond merchant community and one of its stands was to highlight the problems faced by these merchants with the introduction of GST. The campaigning, however, did not have the desired result.
This time, the Aam Aadmi Party is trying to win over the same diamond merchant community. But experts say that going by historical trends, this constituency has largely voted BJP and interactions with a few of the merchants in the city indicate that this may not have changed much.
Experts also say that any losses the community may have had to bear due to global geopolitical events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine may not work to shift votes away from the BJP.
As part of our CNBC-TV18's on-going series 'Election Exchange', Santia Gora dropped into the city to get a sense of how the political winds are blowing.
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