Auto-hubs of Gujarat among ‘expenditure sensitive’ areas for Lok Sabha elections

In the last few years, both these regions of the district have seen a lot of wealth flowing into bank accounts of the land-holding farmers after state government made large-scale land acquisitions for developing industrial nodes and auto-hubs that currently houses to automobile companies like Ford Motors, Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki. For instance, Gujarat government, during the last two years, acquired 3200 hectares of land from farmers in Sanand and about 800 hectares in Viramgam taluka.

Sanand is part of Gandhinagar Parliamentary constituency currently represented by veteran BJP leader LK Advani, while Viramgam falls under the Surendranagar constituency.

Apart from Sanand and Viramgam, the other “expenditure sensitive” areas in Ahmedabad district are Dariapur (Ahmedabad-West), Danilimda (Ahmedabad-West), Vejalpur (Gandhinagar) and Daskroi (Kheda Parliamentary constituency).

Apart from the one flying squad that has been deployed to monitor election expenses at each “assembly constituency”, the ECI has also deployed an additional flying squad in these “expenditure sensitive” areas, Singh added.

However, a pan-Gujarat figure of expenditure sensitive areas was not divulged by the Election officials. When asked the total number of such “expenditure sensitive” pockets in Gujarat, the chief electoral officer, Anita Karwal said, “We would not like to part with this information. It might actually defeat the purpose.”

Karwal however stated that the election commission officials were taking a “number of steps” in these sensitive pockets.

The other areas where the state government has acquired large tracts of farm land in the last two years are Dahej ( about 4400 hectares) in Bharuch district, Halol in Panchmahal district, Becharaji in Mehsana district and others.