Manoj
Sorathiya, Aam Aadmi Party’s Gujarat general secretary, said Thursday that the
party will announce its chief ministerial face for the Gujarat Assembly
elections on Friday, November 4. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is choosing its
chief ministerial candidate through public opinion, just like it did in Punjab
where Bhagwant Mann eventually became the chief minister.

Who is
Manoj Sorathiya?

Sorathiya,
39, has been a key member of AAP since the party was born in the shadows of the
India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. Till 2012, Manoj Sorathiya was a booth-level
leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He managed the Varachha booth in
the Patidar-dominated community.

Manoj
Sorathiya and his family are originally from Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district. They
moved to Surat when Sorathiya was a child on account of his father’s employment
and continued to live there. It was in Surat that Manoj Sorathiya did his
schooling and then went on to pursue a BPharm degree.

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However, he
later started working in a textile unit and eventually went on to run his own
textile unit.

Sorathiya
joined AAP when it was formed, according to an Indian Express interview of the
politician. “I started working for the party in Gujarat, and in 2014 under the
banner of AAP, we fielded candidates. After the Delhi Assembly elections in
2015, where AAP won 67 out of 70 seats, Kejriwal called a meeting in Delhi,” he
said. It was from there that Sorathiya started working on giving AAP a
footprint in Gujarat.

“My family
was traditionally BJP voters. But all of us shifted our allegiance to AAP,
because of its agenda of providing education, health and basic facilities for
the poor, which should have been provided by the BJP in Gujarat,” Manoj
Sorathiya told Indian Express.

Manoj
Sorathiya is credited with bringing in a number of big leaders or visible
public figures into the Aam Aadmi Party mould.