Aam Aadmi Party names three more candidates for Gujarat Lok Sabha polls

AHMEDABAD: Aam Aadmi Party here today declared candidates from Patan, Surendranagar and Amreli Lok Sabha constituencies of Gujarat.The party has made Atul Patel (Patan), Jetha Patel (Surendranagar) and Nathalal Sukhadia (Amreli) its candidates for the ensuing general elections.

Earlier, AAP had declared candidates from Banaskantha, Sabarkantha and Junagadh. Atul Patel (39), who runs the NGO Tilak Education Charitable Trust, has been an AAP worker since its beginning.

"I joined Aam Aadmi Party when it was formed as I was devoted to anti-corruption movement of Arvind Kejriwal," Patel told PTI. "I had accompanied Kejriwal in Patan on his tour of Gujarat to verify the claims of development by Chief Minister Narendra Modi," he said.

Jetha Patel (58) joined AAP on January 14 this year, after resigning as the state vice president of Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (an RSS-promoted organisation).

"It is Modi government's propaganda that farmers in Gujarat are happy, but reality is different," Patel told PTI. "If farmers are happy here, then why are they committing suicide? They are doing so due to biased and pro-industrialist policy of the state government." Patel had led farmers' agitation in Becharaji and Mandal tehsils of Mehsana against declaration of special investment region (SIR) in the area.

"Farmers lands are being taken away forcibly and given to the industries," he said. Nathalal Sukhadia (39) is an RTI activist who was allegedly attacked by the associates of the former state minister Dilip Sanghani in 2011 after he exposed a Rs 500 crore scam in the horticulture subsidy schem "I was impressed by Arvind Kejriwal's anti-corruption movement," he said.