Rivaba Jadeja is the BJP's candidate from the North Jamnagar seat.
Gujarat BJP candidate Rivaba Jadeja, wife of cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, said today she saw "no difficulty" in contrasting ideologies within her family after her husband's family campaigned for her Congress rival.
"There is no difficulty. There can be people of different ideologies in the same family," Rivaba Jadeja told reporters as Gujarat voted in the first round of a two-part election.
"I have trust in the people of Jamnagar, we will focus on overall development, and this time as well BJP will win by a good margin," she said.
Rivaba Jadeja is the BJP's candidate from the North Jamnagar seat.
A relative of Congress veteran Hari Singh Solanki, Rivaba Jadeja joined the BJP in 2019, three years after marrying into a family mostly of Congress supporters. Earlier this week, her father-in-law appealed to people to vote for the Congress in a video that went viral. Her sister-in-law Naynaba Jadeja, a Congress leader, also campaigned for her party candidate.
"I'm with Congress. Party matter is different from family matter. We should stay with our party. I have been with them for years," said Anirudhsinh Jadeja, her father-in-law.
Asked about going against a party his son supports, Jadeja senior said: "He knows it's a party matter. There is no family problem."
Naynaba Jadeja, her sister-in-law, said it's not "Jadeja versus Jadeja" in Jamnagar as there were many families like this in Jamnagar with ideological differences.
"My love for my brother stays the same. My sister-in-law is a BJP candidate as of now. As a sister-in-law she is good," she said.
"In our family, we have freedom. Our family members can do whatever they want to do. They have the right to do that," added Naynaba Jadeja.
Soon after her father-in-law's video emerged, Rivaba Jadeja had brushed off speculation of a feud within the family and had said her husband backed her.
"It is not the first time that two members of a party are associated with two different ideologies. He is speaking as a worker of another party and not as my father-in-law. It is his personal matter. I believe in the people of Jamnagar. Jamnagar has given us numerous things. My husband was born here, he started his career here," she told news agency ANI earlier this week, adding that her father-in-law and sister-in-law were campaigning "as the workers of another party".
On her husband, she said: "I and he are not two people, we are one. Our thinking is one and have same ideology. We complement each other. There is no confusion in this. We are very sure about what to do in life and what not to do. There is no confusion in the family. It is only a matter of ideology."
In the first round of the Gujarat election, voting took place in 89 constituencies spread across Kutch, Saurashtra and South Gujarat.