2024 Lok Sabha Elections | ‘It’s my dream to see the Indian National Congress take power in Gujarat,’ says Geniben Thakor, the Indian National Congress’s lone MP

“It is a dream for me to see the Indian National Congress return to power in Gujarat. The Indian National Congress will hoist the flag in the Gujarat Assembly. The Lok Sabha election results have shown that it is possible,” Geniben Thakor, the Indian National Congress’s only MP in a decade, told party leaders and workers at a victory celebration in Ahmedabad.

Party leaders described her victory as “new hope” in a state that has been ousted from power since 1995.

Thakor is the only Congress candidate to win the LS election from Banaskantha constituency, preventing the BJP from winning three consecutive elections in the state. He is the only Congress MP to be elected from Gujarat in a decade, as the BJP had won the state in 2014 and 2019, winning all 26 seats.

“On one side there was money power and on the other side there was people power,” Thakor, 48, asserted in her speech, thanking the party for giving her election promises and workers who continued to support her during the election campaign. She said that for the first time in a decade, a “real voice from Gujarat” would be heard in the Congress.

Thakor’s victory overshadowed the BJP’s landslide victory, which won 25 seats in the state. The ruling party termed her win “disappointing”. Thakor tendered her resignation as state Assembly member from Babu constituency, Banaskantha, to Speaker Shankar Chaudhary in Gandhinagar on Friday.

She was welcomed by state leaders including party president Shaktisinh Gohil at the Congress headquarters in Ahmedabad’s Rajiv Bhavan, where she was joined by district presidents and other workers who had gathered to celebrate her victory in a packed venue.

Thakor recounted how he joined the Indian National Congress in 1995 and ran his first taluka panchayat election at the age of 18. The Indian National Congress has not been in power since then.

Known as a fiery grassroots leader, Thakor said she first became a member of the state assembly in 2012. She said during her political career she has contested nine elections from panchayat to assembly and won all except two, which she lost.

State party leaders including Shaktisinh Gohil and Shailesh Parmar described her win as “a new hope” for the party to do well in the upcoming local body elections. Khedbrahma MP Tushar Chaudhary, who unsuccessfully contested the LS election from Sabarkantha constituency, said winning even one seat in Gujarat “would be tantamount to defeating Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.