Gandhinagar: Congress leader and newly elected Lok Sabha MP from Banaskantha, Geniben Thakor, today resigned as the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of the Vav assembly seat. Following her resignation, the number of Congress MLAs in Gujarat Vidhan Sabha has come down to 12.

After the 2022 assembly election, the Congress party had initially won 17 seats. However, later, 4 of its MLAs resigned from the Vidhan Sabha, leaving Congress with only 13 members in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly. With Geniben Thakor’s resignation, the count has further decreased to 12.

Geniben, who has been a two-time MLA from the Vav assembly seat in North Gujarat, contested the 2024 Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket and emerged victorious against BJP’s Dr. Rekha Chaudhary. According to constitutional norms, she had to resign from one of the posts, and she chose to resign from the MLA post. Geniben submitted her resignation today to Vidhan Sabha Speaker Shankar Chaudhry in state capital.

Following Geniben’s resignation, there are now two vacant seats in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha: Vav and Visavadar. The Visavadar seat was vacated after the resignation of AAP MLA Bhupat Bhayani in December last year. The Election Commission will conduct bypolls for the Vav assembly seat within six months. Bypolls were not held for the Visavadar seat along with Lok Sabha polls as the matter was sub judice before the High Court.

Currently, there are 180 MLAs in the Gujarat Assembly, with 2 seats vacant out of a total of 182 seats. The distribution of seats is as follows: the BJP holds 161 seats, Congress has 12 seats, the Aam Aadmi Party holds 4 seats, there are 2 independent MLAs, and 1 seat is represented by the Samajwadi Party. DeshGujarat