Banaskantha is the only Lok Sabha constituency in Gujarat where both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition Congress have fielded women candidates. Two-term MLA Geniben Thakor of the Congress will take on BJP's Rekha Chaudhary, an engineering professor making her poll debut, in the upcoming parliamentary polls. Thakor defeated the then Gujarat minister and senior BJP leader Shankar Chaudhary in the 2017 assembly polls and Swarupji Thakor of the saffron party in 2022. Known for advocacy of women's rights, Thakor had in 2020 said "rapists must be burnt alive rather than being handed over to police," after the alleged rape of a 14-month-old girl in Gujarat. She was one of the 17 Congress candidates who managed to bag seats in the 2022 Gujarat assembly polls, which were won by the BJP with a record mandate. Rekha Chaudhary's grandfather Galbabhai Chaudhary founded the Banas Dairy, which procures milk from 4.5 lakh farmers every day, an initiative which has ope