Amreli: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has entered Gujarat’s cooperative sector by taking control of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) in Bagasara town, Amreli district. Kanti Satasiya, an AAP leader recently arrested for allegedly threatening and driving a woman to suicide, has been elected as the chairman of Bagasara APMC.

The first meeting of the new board of directors of Bagasara APMC was convened on June 28, 2024, with the agenda to elect the chairman and vice-chairman. Kanti Satasiya and Sanjay Rafaliya filed their nominations for chairman and vice-chairman respectively. As no other nominations were received, they were declared winners unopposed.

Satasiya, a 55-year-old cooperative leader who had previously switched between BJP and Congress before joining AAP in 2022, lost the December 2022 Assembly election from the Dhari seat to BJP’s J V Kakadiya. However, a year later, he was elected unopposed to the board of directors of Bagasara APMC in December 2023, representing one of the ten seats for the farmers’ constituency. Alongside him, nine other directors from the farmers’ constituency, four from the traders’ constituency, and one from the sale-purchase unions’ constituency were also elected unopposed.

Currently, the Bagasara APMC board lacks representation from Bagasara municipality, as the BJP-led municipality has not yet nominated its representative. DeshGujarat