SAMAJWADI'S ASSET AND CHIEF LIABILITY

The Samajwadi Party (SP) is in a strange bind in Gujarat. Kutiyana and neighbouring It won two municipalitiesRanavav-in the recent local body polls for 68 municipalities, three taluka panchayats and the Junagadh Municipal Corporation.

- By Jumana Shah

The trouble is, Kutiyana was won by the party's lone MLA, Kandhal Jadeja, son of late 'Godmother' Santokben Jadeja, the alleged doyenne of illegal mining and several transport businesses in the region in the '80s and '90s, whose life inspired the 1999 Bollywood film Godmother, a role Shabana Azmi essayed. The eldest of Santokben's four sons and heir to her dubious legacy, Kandhal has been acquitted in two murder cases but has several other cases under the Arms Act, TADA and criminal conspiracy in various stages of trial and appeal.

His political career had begun with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), on whose ticket he won the Kutiyana seat in the 2012 Gujarat election, a year after his mother’s death. He held the seat for 10 years till 2022, when the NCP denied him a ticket for voting twice against its mandate in the Rajya Sabha polls. And though his history of cross-voting weighed heavy on the SP, it accommodated him, since the recommendation came from none other than Gujarat veteran and former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela, an old aide of SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and whom Akhilesh Yadav often consults. Kandhal himself is believed to have become a Vaghela loyalist in return for a favour Vaghela extended as CM in the late ’90s.