High-voltage battle on cards in Rajkot (west)
(WorldNews India)

Rajkot: When Haren Pandya, the then home minister, had refused to vacate his `safe` Ellisbridge seat for chief minister-designate Narendra Modi in 2002, the latter was forced to fight the by-elections from Rajkot (west) then called Rajkot 2. Modi sailed through comfortably and went on to become Gujarat`s CM. Former finance minister Vaju Vala, now the Karnataka governor, had vacated this seat that he had won seven times and Modi, too, won with a margin of 14,728 votes. Rajkot (west) is considered the safest seat for BJP ever since Arvind Maniyar, one of the founders of the saffron party in Gujarat, first won from here as a Bharatiya Jan Sangh candidate in 1975. He went on to become the mayor...