Patidar leader and former Congressman Hardik Patel has been given ticket from the Viramgam seat that the BJP lost in the last two assembly polls. Hardik Patel was born on 20 July 1993 and he worked in Gujarat as a social activist. He rose to prominence in July 2015, where he led the Patidar reservation agitation that sought Other Backward Class (OBC) status for the Patidar caste. He joined the Congress party in 2020. Patel served as the Working President of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, the state unit of INC in Gujarat. He left INC in May 2022. Flipping from being a strident critic, he eventually joined the Bharatiya Janata party in June 2022.