Amit Chavda has been appointed as the new Congress legislative party leader Gujarat

Key Takeaways:

• Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the Congress, selected Amit Chavda to serve as the party’s leader in the Gujarat Assembly.
• Last month, the party passed a unanimous resolution entrusting Kharge with making these selections.
• The Congress won only 17 seats in the recently completed elections for the Gujarat Assembly, the fewest since the BJP came to power.

Amit Chavda, the former Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president as well as MLA from the Anklav constituency, has been appointed as the legislative party’s leader in the Gujarat Assembly by Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. 

Kharge also named Shailesh Parmar, an MLA from Dani Limda in Ahmedabad, as deputy leader, a position he has held since the previous term.

In a letter sent on Monday, AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal informed GPCC Chairman Jagdish Thakor of these appointments.

The party had unanimously approved a resolution last month entrusting Kharge with the decision regarding these appointments.

In the recently held Gujarat Assembly elections, the Congress garnered only 17 seats, its lowest number since the BJP assumed power. 

It also fell one seat short of the 10% seat threshold needed to select the leader of the opposition in the new assembly. One hundred fifty-six seats were won by the BJP and five by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Raghu Sharma, the AICC’s representative for Gujarat, resigned after the party’s worst performance in the state since scoring 77 in the most recent Assembly elections, claiming “moral responsibility” for the “unprecedented loss” of the party.