State
Union Territories

Gujarat Legislative Assembly

The Gujarat state and the Gujarat Legislative Assembly came into being on 1st May, 1960 when the former Bombay State was bifurcated. During this time, all of the 132 Bombay Legislative Assembly members who were elected from the Gujarat constituencies became Gujarat Legislative Assembly members. Thus, the initial strength of the assembly was 132 but it got revised in 1962, 1967 and 1975 and so on and so, we had 168 members or even 182 members for Gujarat Legislative Assembly from time to time. The present strength is 182 including 13 reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates and 26 for the Scheduled Tribes.

The Gujarat Legislative Assembly has got a unicameral set up and the assembly members are elected through assembly polls conducted every 5 years. On 20th March, 1978, the then President - Dr. Neelam Sanjiv Reddy led the foundation stone for Viththalbhai Patel Bhavan, the new assembly building which was completed in 1982 and Governor Smt. Sharda Mukherjee inaugurated it on 8th July, 1982. Ever since then, all the proceedings of the state are conducted in this Gujarat Legislative Assembly building

The Governor of the state is Pt. Nawal Kishore Sharma. The present Speaker of the assembly is Shri Ashok Chandulal Bhatt. The Chief Minister of the state is Shri Narendra Damodardas Modi. The Leader of the Opposition Party is Shri Shaktisinhji Harishchandrasinhji Gohil. The last Assembly Election in Gujarat was held in 2007. BJP got a clean win and thereby earned the majority of votes and the maximum number of seats. BJP had to its credit 117 seats in the assembly house. The Indian National Congress won 59 seats. The 2002 Gujarat Assembly Elections had shown similar results with the BJP winning 127 seats and the INC following with 51 seats.

The Janata Dal (United) JD (U) gathered 3 seats in the 2007 elections as compared to 2 in the 2002 assembly elections. The Bahujan Samaj Party won a single seat in the house in the last elections as compared to 2 in the previous polls. The 2007 Gujarat Assembly Election was carried out in two phases, December 11 and December 16. The poll result was declared on December 23, 2007 and the new Gujarat government was formed on December 25 of the same year.

It is interesting to note that 3.66 crore people voted for the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly Election and 77 crore were female voters. The Congress contested the elections under the leaders Arjun Modhwadia, Shankarsinh Vaghela and Bharat Solanki. Even Mrs. Sonia Gandhi – the President of INC showed keen interests in the elections.

BJP with its high profile leaders like Rajnath Singh, Om Mathur, Arun Jaitley, Smriti Irani, Navjot Singh Sidhu managed to pool the maximum votes. The BJP was headed by Narendra Modi and marked a fourth consecutive win in the 2007 Gujarat polls. The Congress had campaigned with the slogans ‘Chakde Gujarat - Chakde Congress’ while the BJP attracted the crowd with ‘Jeetega Gujarat’.

The Congress was onto a desperate win because that would have improved its position in the General Elections. Interestingly, Gujarat Congress Party does not want to go against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but to malign Narendra Modi’s reputation. Modi, on the other hand is looking forward to a flourishing economy in Gujarat.