Modi will win from Vadodara by over 5 lakh votes, claims Saurabh Patel

Vadodara: Gujarat Energy Minister Saurabh Patel has claimed that BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will win the election to Vadodara Lok Sabha seat by a "margin of over five lakh votes".

"We expect majority of votes for Modi and a victory margin of over five lakh votes," Patel, the poll in-charge of Modi for the Vadodara election, told PTI here on Thursday.

Patel, who represents Akota Assembly seat of Vadodara, has been camping in the city ever since the poll process began and supervised party network in all seven Assembly segments falling under the Vadodara LS constituency.

"This will be first time in the country's history of parliamentary polls, that a Prime Ministerial nominee will win Vadodara Lok Sabha seat with such a huge margin," he claimed.

Vadodara saw a record 70.57 per cent polling this year, which is the highest ever recorded in the city in Lok Sabha polls since 1951, he said.

The way people lined up at polling booths to cast their votes, reflected their mood for voting for Modi in large numbers because the city had been "Karmabhumi" for the senior BJP leader in 80s, he said.

Vadodara's sitting BJP MP Balkrishna Shukla had won the seat by a margin of 1.36 lakh of votes over his nearest Congress rival Satyajitsinh Gaekwad in 2009, when Vadodara constituency had recorded 49.2 per cent voting.

All the seven Assembly seats under Vadodara Lok Sabha constituency are held by the BJP, which is also the ruling party in the Vadodara Municipal Corporation and district panchayat.

BJP city unit president Bharat Danger said, "We effectively used social media and registered more than 25,000 people on Facebook for carrying out campaign in favour of Modi."

Modi is pitted against Congress general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, AAP candidate S Kulkarni and others for the LS contest in Vadodara.