Gopal Kalan Tandel

Gopal Kalan Tandel is the son of Kalan Bijia Tandel.[1] He studied at the South Gujarat University, obtaining a B.Com. degree.[1] He served as the president of the Daman Municipal Council between 1984 and 1986.[1]

After Daman and Diu were separated from Goa and given Union Territory status of its own, a by-election for a new Lok Sabha constituency was held on 7 November 1987.[2] Tandel won the seat, defeating the independent candidate Narayan Fugro.[3] Tandel had stood as an Indian National Congress candidate and obtained 17,027 votes.[2][4] He lost the Daman and Diu seat in the 1989 Lok Sabha election. He stood as an Indian National Congress candidate, finishing second with 13,807 votes (37.79%).[5]

He stood as an independent in the election for the Daman and Diu seat in the 1991 Lok Sabha election. He finished in second place with 9,808 votes (25.85%).[6]

He regained the Daman and Diu seat in the 1996 Lok Sabha election, standing as an Indian National Congress candidate. He obtained 24,543 votes (50.62% of the votes in the constituency).[7] He resigned from the Indian National Congress on 26 December 1997, along with three other parliamentarians.[8] He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on 20 January 1998, along with B.P. Maurya and Mohanbhai Sanjibhai Delkar.[9] On 15 March 2004 the Central Election Committee of BJP declared Tandel as its candidate in the Daman and Diu seat in the 2004 Lok Sabha election.[10] He finished in second place with 26,916 votes.[11] Tandel contested the 2009 Lok Sabha election as a Nationalist Congress Party candidate. He got 2,144 votes (3.15%) in the Daman and Diu constituency.[12] As of 2011 he was the president of the NCP unit in Daman.[13]