AHMEDABAD: In a bid to rejuvenate its sagging fortunes in Gujarat, the Congress party has reinstated Anklav MLA Amit Chavda as the state president on Thursday, marking his second term in the role.
Alongside, tribal leader and former Union Minister Tushar Chaudhary has been appointed as the Leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly.
The appointments come at a critical juncture for the Congress, which has been on a consistent losing streak in both state and national elections.
Chavda’s reappointment comes after the abrupt resignation of Shaktisinh Gohil, who stepped down just four hours after the bypoll results for Kadi and Visavadar were announced.
Shailesh Parmar had been holding the fort as acting president since then. Chavda, who is also the relative of senior Congress leader Bharatsinh Solanki, previously held the post between 2018 and 2021, before resigning following the party’s poor performance in the local body elections.
His return is the result of high-level deliberations held in Delhi on July 10, where Gujarat Congress veterans were summoned to discuss leadership changes.
Among the contenders for the post were Geniben Thakor and Lalji Desai, but the party eventually fell back on Chavda, signalling a return to experienced hands.
The frequent leadership changes underscore the Congress's internal turmoil and its repeated failures at the ballot box. Jagdish Thakor had earlier resigned as president after the party’s rout in the 2022 Assembly elections, making way for Shaktisinh Gohil in June 2023, a tenure that too proved short-lived.
Congress’s electoral decline in Gujarat has been steep and persistent. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the party managed 11 out of 26 seats with a 44% vote share, trailing the BJP by just 3.5per cent.
However, by 2014, the BJP swept all 26 seats with a massive 26.2 per cent vote margin over Congress. The trend continued in 2019, with the BJP again claiming all 26 seats and widening its vote margin to over 30 per cent. In 2024, Congress barely broke the drought, winning just one seat, a symbolic gain amid a sea of losses.
In the state’s assembly politics too, Congress has failed to win power since 1995, suffering consecutive defeats in 1998, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022.
The party now hopes that the combined experience of Amit Chavda and Tushar Chaudhary can help arrest its decline and rebuild its base ahead of future electoral battles. However, with a decimated cadre, dwindling vote share, and a resurgent BJP, the path ahead for Gujarat Congress remains steep and uncertain.