Rivaba Jadeja, wife of ace India cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, among winners in Gujarat elections 2022

• Shubham
• 08 December, 2022

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By: Shubham Ghosh

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi swept his home state of Gujarat on Thursday (8) and among the 150-plus candidates of the saffron party who either won or were leading was Rivaba Jadeja, the wife of ace India cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, who has played 60 Tests, 171 one-day internationals, and 63 T20 internationals.

Rivaba, who contested on the BJP’s ticket from Jamnagar North constituency in the two-phase election, emerged victorious with more than 57 per cent vote share. Her closest competitor Karsanbhai Karmur of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could poll only 23 per cent vote while the Indian National Congress’s Bipendrasinh Chatursinh Jadeja came a distant third with just 15.5 per cent votes.

Rivaba, who was born in Gujarat’s Rajkot and got married to Ravindra in 2016, is a relative of veteran Congress leader Hari Singh Solanki. She joined the saffron party in 2019 after marrying into a family which mostly consists of Congress supporters. Ravindra’s sister Naynaba Jadeja was seen campaigning for Rivaba’s rival while the cricketer campaigned for his wife ahead of this year’s election. The members though have rubbished claims of rift in the family because of contrasting political loyalty and said it showed that the family encouraged a culture of openness.

Elated by the win, Rivaba praised the BJP and told reporters that people were convinced with the work the ruling party has done for the state in the last 27 years and believed that they wanted to take the journey forward only with it.

“Gujarat was with BJP and will continue to be with them,” Rivaba, who won by more than 30,000 votes, said.

Rivaba had said that she was impressed and inspired by Modi to join the BJP.

The BJP was set to eclipse the 37-year-old record of the Congress which had won 149 out of 182 seats in the state in 1985.

It was leading in 156 seats when the last reports came in, increasing its tally handsomely over that in 2017 and annihilating opponents such as the AAP and the Congress.