Who is Isudan Gadhvi, AAP’s Gujarat CM candidate who lost his constituency?

Isudan Gadhvi, the Aam Aadmi Party's chief ministerial candidate in Gujarat, lost his constituency, Khambalia, to the BJP's Ayar Mulubhai Bera by a margin of 18,745 votes.

Gadhvi, 40, had claimed that the party will win more than 100 of 182 seats in the state. However, early trends showed that AAP was leading in less than 10 seats overall.

Former journalist Isudan Gadhvi joined the Aam Aadmi Party in 2021 in Gujarat, which has been BJP’s stronghold for 27 years.

Isudan Gadhvi aka Isudanbhai Gadhvi was born into a farmer family in Pipaliya village of the Dwarka district. He belongs to the Other Backward Class category, which accounts for 48 percent of the state's population.

Gadhvi graduated from Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad in 2005 with a Master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication and worked as a journalist.

Gadhvi started his career with Doordarshan where he worked in a popular show called ‘Yojana’.

He later joined ETV Gujarati and worked as a field journalist in Porbandar from 2007 to 2011. He rose to fame after he exposed a Rs 150-crore illegal deforestation scam in Dang and Kaparada talukas of Gujarat. His report forced the Gujarat government to take action.

Gadhvi joined the Gujarati TV channel VTV as a prime-time show anchor in 2015. On his show Mahamanthan, he discussed national and state issues with panellists in the studio as well as the audience through ‘phone-ins’. His show was popular among people in rural areas, especially with the farmers.

He later became the youngest channel head in the regional media at VTV. He quit VTV as the channel’s editor in 2021 to join the Aam Aadmi Party which was facilitated by Arvind Kejriwal.

The Delhi chief minister called Gadhvi's joining the AAP a huge sacrifice of a promising career to clean the mess that the ruling party had created in Gujarat, The Times of India reported.

Arvind Kejriwal picked Isudan Gadhvi as Gujarat’s chief ministerial pick for the AAP in November at a public gathering in Ahmedabad. The young leader was selected through public opinion which received 16,48,500 responses. Out of the total, Gadhvi received 73 percent of the votes.

As a part of his election campaign, Gadhvi launched a yatra called the “Bas, Havey Parivartan Joiyiye” from Dwarka district last month which covered 67 constituencies in the state.